Yes, I Know it's Early

It's early, I know, but I just couldn't wait! Every year, around the time the calendar turns to November, I get antsy to decorate for Christmas. I have always loved Christmas, with all the shiny and sparkly decorations and the fun music. When I was growing up, we decorated the day after Thanksgiving, though I would have loved to bust out the Christmas stuff earlier than that. Once I got married, my husband and I figured we would step outside the box and decorate the weekend before Thanksgiving. We were living on the edge, I tell you! Well, we've been getting really unruly the last couple of years, because we've been decorating for Christmas even earlier than that! So here I am, eleven days before Thanksgiving, admiring our lovely Christmas tree, the North Pole Village and various other festive decorations, while listening to my favorite holiday tunes.

It started Friday afternoon. We always set the village up first, and I had the boxes out and ready to go by the time my husband got home from work. Zoey was watching me from her bed in the corner, wondering what I was up to.




I actually had some of my part of the village set up before he got home. Like I said before, I just couldn't wait! There is still a finishing touch (some nice fluffy snow) to be put on the village displays, and there are a few light bulbs to replace, but they are pretty much finished. The first picture is the North Pole Woods, and that is my husband's part of the village. The other pictures are what I am in charge of.





Saturday morning was when the fun really started. I get really excited, like freak-out excited, when it's time to set up the Christmas tree. I got up that morning and got dressed and wanted to put up the tree RIGHT THEN! My husband, on the other hand, had plans to have a cup of coffee and check his email and whatnot on the computer for a few minutes before we got started. What is WRONG with him? Finally we got on track and boxes of Christmas goodies started making their way into the house. I didn't take any pictures of the actual decorating because I was too excited about it, but here is our tree all finished. All that's missing is some festive packages!



Once the tree was done, I moved on to all the "sittin' out stuff". You know, the fun stuff that sits around and looks cute. Here are the denizens of the Christmas forest.



The kitchen tree - Because even though I can see the regular tree perfectly fine from the kitchen, I still like to have a tree in there.



Here's the fireplace, all decorated. The stockings hanging on the fireplace tools rack are for the dog and the bird. Santa even comes to fill them when they've been bad!



And here's the view looking into the living room. I couldn't get this picture to come out very well, but you get the idea. The tree is actually set up where the bird's cage usually sits. Every year, we rock his world and move him to a different part of the room. We like to think of it as Bob's fun adventure to visit the fishes.



And last but not least, the clothespin reindeer is ready to greet everyone who comes in the front door!



There are some other decorations that didn't make it into this post, but I figured if I tried to get everything on here, there would just be way too many pictures. I hope this got you into the holiday spirit!