Christmas 2009 Decorations

Yes it is half-way through January and right on time (for me) I am posting Christmas pictures! I have started with a slideshow of the decoration we did of our new pastorium. Of course with a new house (new to us), it took a while for me to figure out where and how to put everything. I must confess I probably went overboard with my photos, but for one thing I am hoping by taking lots of pics, I can remember how to do this again next year as my mind is not as keen as it once was...I must be getting old or something! Ha!

We had several firsts in our decorating process this year. Maybe these will explain some of the pictures:

1. We bought our first "fake" tree. We have always bought real ones from the time we were first married, mainly because I grew up with an artificial one for so many years. I missed the wonderful scent, but I think the boys' allergies were better off for it.

2. We actually bought 3 "fake" trees and one small real one. I know...that sounds so expensive and so ridiculous! But, thank the Lord for Thanksgiving sales and for both Old Time Pottery & Michaels because we got REALLY GREAT deals on them! Those of you who know me, know it would have to be for me to buy them. I said for many years that I would only have ONE tree, but with this house having a formal living room and it being on the front of the house, I decided to do a themed tree...I used the colors of blue, lime green, gold and silver to highlight the robin's egg blue and light gold colors of that room. And, I put white doves on it to symbolize Peace On Earth! One of the "fake" trees took the place of our usual real tree and it's the one I decorate traditionally. It was located in our family room. The other "fake" tree was really a small one in an urn for the front porch. I decorated it simply with a bow to match the bow on my front door wreath and with holly berries to match my wreath as well. The only real tree we bought was a miniature frazier fir tree for Justus' room. He (my 17 yr old) pitched a fit because his whole life we have always bought a real tree. So we got this one for him and decorated it with blue and silver to compliment his Auburn bedroom. We did actually have one more tree, but it was free from a Seminary give-away I went to last year. It's the small one in Graham's and Wesley's room. They decorated it all by themselves and I think they did a GREAT job!

3. I finally bought us all matching stockings and had our names monogrammed on them. We have not had matching stockings for some time and it was fun to pick them out. My pic of them is not good, but if you can't tell, the boys' stockings all have 3-D characters...Justus has Santa, Graham has an elf (he had elf-ears when he was born and I'm not kidding the elf just looks like him...so cute!), and Wesley's has a snowman. Mine and Richard's were decorated with button polka dots for Richard and ric-rac swirls for me. They all had cute little puffy balls on the toes!

4. I had success and failure with live plants. I grew some beautiful paperwhites for my kitchen window...they were pretty, but were not the variety that smell sweet and Richard was especially sensitive to their bad scent! I also had a beautiful live rosemary tree that I was hoping to keep growing and use in my cooking, but it died about a week ago...I think the dry heat we've had to run practically non-stop during this cold spell just killed it. I also had a beautiful white poinsettia that is still pretty.

5. Lastly, 3 faves this year: 1.)my "Happy Birthday Jesus" plate I displayed in my kitchen...it really went with the colors I used in the kitchen. 2.)My new nativity which I displayed on my piano. I have wanted one this size for many years, but haven't really had anywhere I could display it. So, this year when I went searching, I quickly realized that ones this size are very expensive. I was blessed again, though, to find one on sale for a really great price during the Thanksgiving sales at Kirklands. 3.) And finally my outside decor...including my miniature tree, my new wreath made with my favorite ~ magnolias and red berries, the ribbon I chose to make the bows on both of those as well as on my teddy bear ivy topiary, wreaths on my windows (next year I will light them or spot-light them), and my Christmas "H" garden flag!

Decorating was fun and although it seems like so much when I put it all into words, it didn't seem so as I was doing it. One drawback was that I was sick with a very bad cold while actually having to put it all out, so I was pretty physically exhausted when I was done, but it was still fun...now only about 320 days until I get to do it all again!!!

(By the way, if you are my facebook friend, you can see that I posted this slideshow on my profile there, too. When you click on the name of the slideshow, it will take you to the slideshow and you can choose to see it on full screen and the pics look better and clearer.)