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Dec-or-ate Good Times- C'mon!!!

Did I get the song stuck in your head now too?

So chez LeBaron we decorate for Christmas the second the Thanksgiving leftovers are loaded into Tupperware and shoved in the fridge.  BP would put stuff up even earlier but I somehow manage to hold him off til Black Friday every year.... We get our tree on "Small Business Saturday" from a local nursery... 

Holiday decorating involves boxes and boxes of stuff being lugged up from the basement.  And then BP puts stuff wherever he thinks it was last year and/or and somewhat willy nilly.  So I go around adjusting things, evening out the garlands, de-clumping the lights, etc.  We have a fairly traditional bunch of holiday things- our one "theme" thing is pinecones.  Paul and I have a thing for pinecones ever since our honeymoon in Lake Tahoe where there are GIANT pinecones everywhere....  I also have a ton of Dicken's Village houses (made by Department 56)that we put out every year.  There are always a few that we don't have room for so we rotate which ones we display every year.

Here's how it went down this year:

Seeking out the "perfect" tree.  We go with a Douglas fir as they keep their needles longer...

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Loading up the car:

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Bobby the Elf made his appearance again this year.  The Elf on the Shelf doesn't seem to be enough to convince LP to be a good boy because Santa's elf is watching but he does like the story and looking for Bobby every day to see where he is...

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Decorating the tree.  There's one section, right at LP's eye level that is SWARMING with ornaments!

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Paul showing LP the oldest ornament we have- one from 1976 when Paul was little....

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The tree:

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LP has his own little tree that we put up in his room.  This year, he chose to decorate it in the living room before we carried it upstairs.  

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And yes, he decorated sans pants.  We're still working on potty training!

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An Ernie ornament from my childhood.

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LP's stocking (made by me)

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And my stocking (made by my mom).  Paul's is still in progress, it's been a UFO (unfinished object) since before we got married but I SWEAR it will be finished this year!

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The dining room buffet. Love my little Scandinavian pixie.  He was a splurge purchase for myself a few years ago.  

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Our first kissing ball hung in the dining room window along with our giant glittery glass pinecones.  The garland over the window is made from wine corks- many from our wedding.

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The banister (with snowflake lights and pinecones!).  LOVE the way it looks this year!

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One of my favorite Dicken's Village houses, the Regent Street Coffeehouse.

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The Old Royal Observatory, Scotland Yard, and Doolittle's flowers (which remind me of My Fair Lady).

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St. Martin's in the Field Church.  When I started collecting the Department 56 houses I chose the Dicken's Village line because it reminds me of the year I spent in England.  One day I hope to take BP and LP over there and show them these buildings in person!

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Another special ornament from our first Christmas together.  It's always so much fun to pull out our ornaments- we have ornaments from when we were kids, plus ones we've collected together and they all bring back a lot of wonderful memories.

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LP loves looking at all the ornaments... 

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Socks found her new favorite spot to sleep- under the tree like a Christmas present.  Perhaps I should put a bow on her!

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I love how our house looks all decorated for the holidays.  So cozy and warm... Makes me wish we could leave them up all year long, although they'd probably lose their "specialness" then....

Let the holiday fesitivities begin!  We're ready!

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