a little Christmas in pictures....

I loved Linda's suggestion of posting a little Christmas.  I wandered around and took some pictures with my phone.  The pictures aren't as good as they would be if I used the camera, but still - the color and feelings are there for the most part...

First of all I have to explain that I have a little bit of a Christmas decorating disease.  I can't seem to help myself.  I love my house decorated at Christmas - much, much more than I like it the rest of the year.  All the colors work, it feels so very homey - it's just a warm thing.  I have been working for a couple of years with some very slow success at finding things to fill my house the rest of the year to get some version of the same warm, homey, feelings.

The first step is admitting I've got a problem - but it's a problem I embrace (and luckily so does my family).

So first the trees.  We get one real one - that's the one Santa comes to and we have... cough, cough, ahem, a few others beyond that.  Then there are the little collections that I like to group together on top of shelves here and there; snowmen, more trees, Santas - that kind of thing.

I can't get the captions to work well so I'll just tell you up front what you're seeing; our Real tree is first, then a tree in the living room; a room that is surrounded in windows and so the tree can be seen from a lot of different places outside.  The 2nd row had the kitchen tree which carries all the ornaments the kids have made over the years and all Brad's geek ornaments (read: Star Trek ships) and a collection of trees on top of a shelf which I really like.

The 3rd row are two of my favorite 'pictures'.  On the left is from my friend Camille and I just love the sentiment - this is the first year I got to hang it up and I love it, the 2nd was made by my late grandma when my sister and I were very young.  We were her first two grand kids and she put our names on Santa's list and then along came my cousin Keith about 15 years later and she added his name.  Then his twin siblings came along and there wasn't any more room and my grandma was so mad at herself.  I think she looked at it and was a little bit angry for the rest of her life, but to me it signifies how much she loved that she couldn't let that go - that worry that she somehow slighted the rest of her very much loved grand kids who hadn't yet been twinkles in anyone's eyes when she had first created it.

Next is the snowman collection that greets you as you walk into our house and our stockings hung by the chimney with care (or by the gas fireplace still without a mantle 8 years later with 3M removable hooks - we'll get there).

Then the Santa collection, my beautiful Nativity set, my first attempt at a Christmas amaryllis, and my new favorite things above our cabinets in our kitchen - some big snowmen thinking of riding a bike.  And a couple of pictures of our house at night.  I do the inside and Brad does the outside.  There's no doubt where the party is as you round the corner to our house.  This year for the first time we used colored lights on the outside tree - I think I'm in love.  Happy holidays to all!