Christmas in July?

Christmas in July has never done it for me. Not that the normal Christmas marketing season is much less offensive, but, wow…that’s always seemed way over the top.

That said: yes, I am thinking about Christmas…in July.

Aside from the primary celebration of the true meaning of Christmas (which we keep in focus), we also greatly look forward to decorating for Christmas.

There are several trees on the first floor of our house, so that pretty much wherever you stand, there’s a tree in sight.

While I wish they were real, I confess that they’re not. (Each room also has it’s own manger scene, btw.)

Yes, I start decorating too early, usually around Veteran’s Day, but the trees are not lit until after Thanksgiving Dinner has ended. Decorating early gets the “business” out of the way, so we can focus on Advent and the actual holiday.

We started as a one-tree family, then happened upon a too-good-to-be-true after-Christmas bargain and added a second in our foyer. Another year, another bargain and here we are…seven or so trees later.

A few of the trees feature decorations we’ve acquired over the years and look nice enough…but others have really become defined as family favorites in recent years, with their own special themes and traditions.

Most visitors use our back door, so we have a narrow-profile tree there that is our card tree. I’ve never been able to part with the photo cards people send, so the tree starts with a selection from past years, hung as “ornaments.” I use a hole punch and a wired berry sprig to hang each. New cards are added as they come. The tree is also punctuated with an assortment of mushroom birds and, when I can find them, dried silver dollar cuttings (which look so cool when the white lights shine behind them).

 

 

Our kitchen tree has become a place to display a collection of nutcrackers. They’re wired right onto the branches to support their weight. The tree is also accented with silver-toned glass pinecones, simple silver and multicolored glass ball ornaments, and throwback icicle garland.

  

The front foyer has a tall, slim tree in covered in cardinals, copper and glittered ornaments,  plaid ribbon and large (Dollar Tree) snowflakes and is the background to a very oversized nativity scene at the base.

 

The only tree with multicolored lights is the family room tree. It used to house all the gifted and collected ornaments from over the years, but last year I gave it a makeover and it will be the same again this year….any maybe forever.  It is, hands down, my absolute favorite of all the trees, but it requires a post all it’s own, which I’ll share in December.  Usually, this is the last tree I put up, because it takes the most time, but if I have any readers by then, I’ll put it up first 🙂

SO…why post all of this now?

First, I have to mow the lawn and I am procrastinating.

Second, I was thinking about how the new wall colors we’re using will affect the colors I’ve used on the trees. Then, I also remembered that after jury-rigging a few of the trees with duct tape and lots of light repairs, we hit a huge sale after Christmas and bought several new trees to replace the old ones (which will be fixed and donated). New types of trees will affect placement/design/color etc. Clearly, not a huge life issue, but I do wonder how it will affect what I’ve done in the past. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of changes, so I thought now would be a good time to document some of what I did last year.

I guess this means I’ll have a few more items for the Holiday tab in December 🙂