Decorating our house and the christmas tree (Decorations & Trees in general)

Member Name: mummy2twogirls

Product:	Decorations & Trees in general
Date:	03/11/08 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: spending time as a family

Disadvantages: having to take them down again

We all love the build up to Christmas- buying presents,making the christmas cake, adoring the freshly baked smell of the mince pie's. But one of the things i love is decorating the house and putting up our tree.
Moving out of my mum and dad's house, meant buying and making decorations from scratch.Every year i have a different colour theme, mainly sticking with gold, red and silver.
I do try and make an effort, and we normally start to decorate the house around the second week in December. We order a handmade wreath from our local farmer, who makes the most beautiful holly ones, entwined with fresh red holly berry's, and they really are a big hit in our community, he starts taking orders in November and is busy right up until Christmas eve, we even get our fresh turkeys from him.
Once we've got the wreath sorted, we concentrate on the tree,as much as i love to have a real tree, these days with two small children we opt for a fiber optic one, with built in lights, we brought this two years ago from argos for around £40.00- sounds a lot but it will serve us for many years to come, we then as a family decorate it how we want, i don't tend to spend hours on it, making it perfect! Knowing that we decorated as a family makes it special and unique in it's own way. OK so I'd love to have one of them trees all beautifully lit up and decorated, like the ones you see in the films or your local shopping center, but i know thats not possible!.
Next we start to decorate the house itself, we don't go overboard, but just enough to give it that Christmassy feel, i make paper chains with my daughters and two younger sister's. we also make homemade tree decorations, like stars, angels, etc.
I put card holders on each of the inside doors of our house, the advert calenders stay in the kitchen away from little hands, and each morning they open a window.
Last year we brought a Winnie the pooh light, which stands about 3 foot high we takes pride of place outside on the porch way. And we also out a row of lights in the window. I put out little pots of Christmas pot porri, with scents like mulled wine and holly, just to give the home that christmas feeling.
Another thing i inherited of my aunt was to put a big bowl of chocolates like celebrations, hero's on the dining table, that way when guests come round they can help themselves- that is if i haven't eaten them all beforehand.

Summary: one of my fave parts in the run up to christmas