Christmas Around Our House

I really wanted just to not do this post.  But I said I would, and we're running out of Christmas-y days.  Not that I'm bah-humbuggy or anything, it's just that it's that time of the month that the exciting part of having Christmas decorations up is kind of over, and you just want to have your normal house back.  Am I the only one that feels that way?  I can't wait until the  weekend after Thanksgiving to put everything up, but then I am almost as happy to put it all away.

It might also have something to do with part of the lights being out on the tree, one of my village houses being all dark, and all of the lights being out on the entertainment center garland.  For as little time in the year we ask these lights to work, you think they would last much longer.  And I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.  Maybe next year we'll do it It's A Wonderful Life style and put the tree up on Christmas Eve.  Nawww.

So now that I got that out there, I'll proceed with our Christmas tour.


Might as well start with the tree.  Sorry for the crappy picture.  For some reason, I couldn't for the life of me get a really good picture of the tree this year.  I tried at night and the white balance came out way off, in the daytime it jut looks kind of blah.  Sooo....just know it really looks much better in person.  If you want to check out some of our ornaments from Christmases past, you can check them out here.


If you checked out that link about the ornaments you know that Jason and I add a family ornament to the tree every year.  Here's this year's.


And here's Brennan's.  You knew it had to be a "Choo-choo-whoo-whoo," right?" : )


Here's our Christmas village, tucked safely away from little man and puppy on top of the entertainment center.  Jason is the city planner and construction crew for this thing.  I've found that once I've decorated the tree and found places for all the other stuff, I have no patience for building a village.  He really enjoys it, so it works out well. 


The mantel and a cute kid checking out his St. Nick goodies.  Oh, and the infamous stockings, one of the new additions this year.


Usually I tape all our Christmas cards up around the front door, but this year Brennan has a fascination with tape (and sticking it all over the place), so that wasn't the greatest idea this time around.  Instead, I used the old iron fence piece I have hanging in our dining room and just stuck the cards wherever they would stay.  I think it's kind of cute.


My Santa collection is hanging out in the kitchen.  Here's the hutch.  The rest are on the cabinets and on top of the refrigerator.  (My snowman collection is in the foyer, but I forgot to take a picture of that.  Sorry.)


I was determined that my cloche was going to stay out with the Christmas decorations.  I had a bad feeling about it getting broken.  This Santa head fit it perfectly.  I love it when that happens!


Ho Ho Ho!


And last but not least, my favorite decorations this year are all of the little cuties that Brennan has brought home from school in the past couple of weeks.  I have them all through the house and I just love them.

That's all I got.  We have decorations all through the rest of the house too, but I didn't figure you wanted to see a picture of our bathrooms, or the mound of clothes (thankfully clean!) in our bedroom, so I'll just leave it at that. : )

Hopefully everyone has almost wrapped up (ha ha!) all their Christmas wrapping, buying and baking.  I have a couple of more presents to wrap, and then it's on to food prep and baking.  I'm making a from scratch apple pie for Jason this year.  I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out. : )