It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Part 1

I love Christmas. I love the sights, the smells, the traditions and the memories. I just started my Christmas decorating today. I know many of you are thinking -- decorating this late? Actually, decorating for Christmas on December 15th is quite early for me. You see, ideally I don't want my Christmas to happen in November or October or even at the very beginning of December for that matter.

I think that each person's traditions around Christmas are at least partially influenced by what their family traditions were as they were growing up. When I was a kid, we never decorated for Christmas until around the 20th of December. I even have some vivid memories of decorating our tree on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

So for me to start decorating on the Dec 15th seems very, very early . Why the change in my family tradition? I guess I've come to accept that the rest of America has had their Christmas stuff up for weeks and weeks. And Little Zo Peep has been asking me daily when we were going to start decorating. So finally, today was the day that I started my annual transformation of the Hen House into a sparkling Winter Wonderland. And how nice that Father Winter cooperated and sprinkled the house and trees with a frosting of snow just as I finished getting the lights hanging from the eaves.

Enjoy the photos. First, here's the house from across the street at dusk. The lights are the white icicle kind. I love the snow outlining the trees and shrubs.

This year I bought a large wreath (at least it looked large in the store) to hang on one of the stone chimney on our house. Once I got it home it looked so plain. So last weekend Zo Peep and I bought a lot of gold plastic ornaments at Home Depot and spent last Sunday night wiring them to the wreath.

Once the wreath was hung on the chimney it looked so, so small. I'll have to search for a larger one at the After Christmas sales and transfer the ornaments to that wreath for next year. So even if the scale is a little off, I still like the look of the green wreath and gold ornaments against the sandstone of the chimney.

I put 2 spotlights in the garden to uplight the chimney and wreath.

Originally I thought I'd be in China for the Christmas holiday, so I needed to decide what I was going to do about a tree this year. Typically, I get a 8 foot Frasier fir for the living room. I decorate this tree with all of my most fragile ornaments. I also purchase a second 6 foot tree -- some type of fir -- for the basement family room. This is Zo Peep's tree (soon to be the Kid's tree when Libby Doodle Doo joins us next Christmas). On this tree we put all of my ornaments that are unbreakable as well as any ornaments that Zo Peep makes. This is the tree that Zo Peep can touch and play with without having me freak out.

So 4 weeks ago when I thought I would not be here for Christmas, I decided to buy some -- AHEM -artificial trees for this year's holiday. They arrived at the same time I found out that I WOULD be here for the season. and would be travelling in January to China. I decided to keep the trees (I had purchased pre-lit trees that could be used inside or out) and set them up in the corner of the front porch. You can see the tops of the trees in this shot on the left side (as well as Miss Zo Peep gathering snow for a mammoth snowball to throw at me).

I'll end with a photo of Little Zo Peep bundled up enjoying the wet and clumpy snow -- great for snowballs and great for sledding. Let's hope we get more for tomorrow.

I'll move my decorating to the inside tomorrow . I hope to get the trees up and put the lights on -- I'll put on ornaments throughout the week. I also want to buy some greenery -- cedar, holly, winterberry, etc to put around the house. I love the smell of greenery at Christmas time. I'll post more pictures in a few days.

Hope all of you are having a happy holiday season.