Ho ho holy crap I have a lot of Christmas decorations!

I've started with the Christmas decorating and it's really amazing the amount of things I have. I've always been very into decorating for Christmas because for all the years that we lived in The City, we participated in a "Holiday Open House" for our street and thousands of people would visit each year. It was pretty exciting and I will say that I'm pretty sure my house was one of the best as far as decorations go.

So now I have a much bigger house but still an exorbitant amount of decorations. I also got half of my mom's decorations this weekend. The Sister and I went to The Dad's house and divided them all up. I thought it was going to be difficult but it actually turned out to be kind of fun. We laughed about all the stuff my mom had (now I know where I get it) and we divided it all up and donated some. (Nurse it out Cathy! ...sorry inside joke!) My dad kept very few items, he's never been into all the hoopla of Christmas decorating anyway. I think he was happy to see it being put to good use and he enjoyed being the Official Straw Holder when The Sister and I had to draw straws over a "big ticket item". I ended up with some great old ornaments, a huge beautiful Lennox platter and all the kitschy 50's decorations I wanted although I had to give up the ceramic tree for those. The Sister ended up with most of the things she wanted too. It worked out great. Then I brought it all home. Get a load of those swell 70s boxes. Those ornament chests have been around at least as long as I have...


Here it is after The Husband unloaded it into the garage.


Here's what I had already in my basement.

Here's The Son's reaction to all of it in the dining room.


No, he's not the least bit dramatic...why would you say that?

So, the trees are done...more or less. We have a 9 footer in our foyer and a 6 footer in the family room. I have enough ornaments left that I could probably fill another entire tree but I'm still loading them on the 9 footer as I unpack them. I DO like a lot of ornaments on a tree and they are looking very beautiful. I am having my favorite cousin visit this weekend and I'm hoping to have the decorating pretty much finished. We'll see how it goes, between feeding the child, wrestling shoes out of the mouth of my puppy and uploading all these pictures, not much has gotten done today. I also have to teach swimming in an hour or so but I remain hopeful, it's only Monday right? Happy beginning of the holidays!