A time of excess

You have seen pictures of our house. While I do like a lot of furniture packed into a small amount of space, Rob has taught me some restraint in the parts of the house I share with everyone else (obviously not my sewing room). But, at the holidays, we go all out.

We share responsibilities on decorating. Rob has his part, I have my part, Sydney helps and provides technical support and advice (and runs errands, like keeping our glasses full of fresh, cold water while we often put up decorations in 85 degree November temps(not the case this year)).

First is the swag. We have a vaulted ceiling with a huge beam that runs along it in our great room. And, we have enough holiday decorations to put up two trees. But, there's no room for two trees, so we put the second set on this swag. We've been collecting these red ornaments since we got together, almost 11 years ago.

This is the first thing guests notice when they come into the house because it is a bold holiday statement.



Lit up.


Some of the ornaments. There are pieces of glass candy and balls and hearts and apples and birds and squiggly shapes, but they are all basically red.

And, then there's the tree.

This is decorated with the ornament collection that my Mom started for me when I was a kid.

And, we've added to it, too. We love the LiBien ornaments from Pier 1 and have a large collection of the dove ornament that they release each year as well as some other beautiful hand painted ones.

I think this angel is the oldest ornament on the tree. She has a date on the bottom of 1964 and my initials. And, the little disk next to her is a Norman Rockwell ornament. My Mom bought those for several consecutive years and I think there are about 10-12 on the tree.

That's it for my decorating. Funny, it took two days to put it all up and just a couple of pics to show it off.

Rob does a different set of decorating. He's in charge of our Christmas villages (yes, multiple towns). I'm hoping I can get him to write me a couple of blog posts about the best points of that collection. How would that be? Maybe if we all clap like we did to keep Tinkerbell alive he'll write something on here for us?

Take care and I hope your holidays are shaping up nicely and that you have fairies that do all the decorating work for you so you can just sit back and enjoy it. Lane