I do have the glittery red plates for Christmas dinner and the holiday tablecloth, that does count -- so I'm not totally bah humbug, just 95% so. LOL!

My parents decorated. Always indoors, usually string lights around the porch. For me I don't so much because the villages do it for me. I tend to leave the winter village up for a couple months during winter, it's only Christmas for a few days when I put out the santas. Sometime in Feb it will start going away to transition into just being a cleared room till spring village starts turning up. Depends on when the spring gardening itch hits, lol. I tend to want to see blooms before winter is done.

What are these villages, Bees?

It's just me and the furry guys most years, as the rest of the family is typically out of town for the holidays. And I rarely ever entertain. My place is too small to fit a regular tree so I keep things simple - lights, candles, fresh flowers and a couple of tabletop trees. I do lights outside as well. I live surrounded by woods and it gets dark so early, lights just brighten everything up, even if I am the only one who sees them!

My main entry doors are sliders so no wreath. But I sometimes will create a swag of greens and berries, etc. to hang next to the door. But it is really all about the lights for me.

I do red bows on the porch posts and solar lights. They're awesome, turning themselves on and off at dusk/dawn - if they got enough sun the day before to still be going @ dawn. We have no outlets outside.

From what I've seen ornaments on an outdoor tree are unusual. Lights on a tree are common. If you don't have the right size tree, shrubs can be lit. There are a lot of cool rope lights too, for going along a walkway, or looping around a handrail.

This late in the season, there might not be much left to buy. If you make the effort to put them up in an orderly fashion, you should be able to use them again and not feel like it's a hassle. Those cardboard tubes from wrapping paper are great for storing string lights. Cut them in 2-3 pieces and roll the lights around, stick the ends inside the tubes, put in a box.

Icicle lights are frustrating because the secondary strings are always kinky and not straight.

I had just mentioned our outdoor decorations. For indoors I am still pretty gung ho after 71 years. My daughter is living at home right now and she dislikes crowding out Thanksgiving with Christmas decor put out too early. I too like to give Thanksgiving it's space. So we wait till December at least. Just got our main tree up a few days ago.

We used to buy a fresh tree every year but one time I was at a thrift store and the manager had a fake tree in a box which she couldn't fit in the store so she gave it to me. It's not the greatest but looks nice with all our old ornaments on it. Some are as old as I am. Some were made by our kids when they were little. It's a very old fashioned looking tree...multi colored lights and tinsel and all colors of old glass blown ornaments. Have to get some candy canes.

We also have a narrow pine tree looking thing in the hall which has white lights, and a collection of tree shaped candles, and an old tall narrow aluminum looking tree, and a candy jar and poinsettia on the hall credenza.

I got a tall narrow flocked tree at Goodwill and put old fashioned looking but LED lit ceramic style large bulbs on it. I tell my daughter people used to use those big bulbs a lot. It's great how they stay cool.

I enjoy putting a Christmas tablecloth out and using Christmas china. Husband bought a giant fruitcake from Collin Street bakery and it was delicious...miles and miles better than any other fruitcake I think. Best with a little bourbon on it.

Will be baking some cookies such as cocoons ( daugher's favorite) and will make my famous bourbon balls to send in box to the BILs. PLan to have a roast beef Christmas eve and pecan pie. We try to cut down on Christmas treats. Daughter ran a 5 K race Fri. night and a half marathon the next morning so she burns up a lot of calories on a regular basis.

A real tree and some greenery inside. A real foliage wreath on the front door. No front garden but some in our street put a string of twinkly lights in our window boxes, which we all have. Red cyclamen In the window boxes. But nothing has been done yet though.

String lights go on the balcony railing and the Clematis tepee before Diwali and stay there till spring. I switch them on intermittently closer to the festive days. The purple grow lights "decorate" the two sunny windows as soon as days get shorter and the plants migrate indoors. Also have a small norfolk pine that dons a few golden decorations for the Christmas. :) Diwali is a bigger deal and dozens of Diyas (terracotta bowls with oil and wick) are lit for the evening Puja and then placed on the sides of all doors and windows. The "doing what parents did" applies. :)

So, instead of talking about it, my DH and I got moving and got a tree and a wreath and have it home and in the stand. Waiting for the decorations. It’s about 5ft tall and narrow and will probably only hold about 1/4 of the ornaments we usually use. But I feel happy about the decision to go with a small tree over no tree. Cost of one fresh 5 ft tree? $30. I looked at that price and remembering all the trees we’ve bought over the 25+ years we’ve lived here, we used to pay that for a full grown tree. [g] Still I think we got off cheap and it didn’t take all day to pick one out. Spent another $10. For a small swag for the front door. We have a small cape house and small always fits better.

BeesNeeds - I love the villages too. We have houses but haven’t the space to display more than few of those and I haven’t accessorized them.

GGal - Smaller space does make some of the choices for us. Tabletop trees are very cute and a lot less work.

Good point about how living on a dark lot gives you a more compelling reason to do lights outside. At my house, we put our window shades down right after supper for a month this time of year, because the light from our neighbor’s Christmas displays is blinding! LoL

Tiffany, I like the sound of solar lights. I have a tree that is just the right size and shape - A western Arborvitae that is positioned lined up with my DR window so that will work great.

You’re right, it’s late for this year, but I can make some decisions about it for next year and maybe in time to buy a few things with an after Christmas sale for next year…thinking of lights.

Love your idea for storing string lights in tubes from the wrapping paper!

Erasmus - I’m with your daughter - no Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving. Our daughter lives nearby and she got her tree the day after Thanksgiving. We buy fresh, so I don’t like to have it in the house that long, we just picked one up today.

My Mom did an artificial tree for about 10 years and we were all craving a fresh tree and out went the artificial and we’ve always had fresh ever since. They can be very pretty! And when someone gifts it to you, you have to use it right?

We still have ornaments from when the kids were small. Sadly, I only have a couple still left from my Mom’s tree when I was small.

We used to bake a lot and exchange cookies with neighbors, but too many diet restrictions at this point to do that. [g]

Floral - I love the sound of twinkly lights and red cyclamen in window boxes!

GetGoing - I love Norfolk Pine! And all your lights sound so festive. Traditions are a great way to remember the last generation and remember the happy times for the most part, when we were little.

Anyone want to post photos of their Christmas decorations? 😀 I'm wondering how many here lean toward garden related ornaments and decorations?

rosa, the villages I do are like Christmas villages, only I do a lot of them. It started out as a few things for Halloween. Then it grew into filling the living room. Then it went into having some more autumn stuff and not just Halloween spooky.... then that led to a winter village, spring village, fourth of july parade time, and so on. Since my winter village stays up for a couple months and does not have much Christmas in it till the few days around Christmas, it's a winter village instead of a Christmas village.

I usually don't set villages up the same way every year. Sometimes I'll really rearrange the room for additional platform space to set up, sometimes I keep it fairly small. I always do a halloween and winter village, I don't always set up the other ones. I do sometimes just pop up a vignette on the mantel or in the corner nook just for fun.

We made a 10ft ‘tree’ out of cable wire this past week - still needs the base wrapped so it can go up on the deck it’s standing next to right now. Our kids are all adults so I guess this is just for us old folks. I adore lights so this has nice to look at. The picture isn’t great, it’s much brighter in person especially in the woodsy dark of the back yard.

It’s listing a bit to the left but that will be corrected when lifted back onto its base on the deck.

Thanks for the photo, I'm trying to picture you and your husband making this and keeping the strings of lights straight and moving from the base to the top. Must have had a very tall ladder! Or maybe you did it while it was lying on the ground?

It's an adjustment doing Christmas after the kid's are adults. You have to figure out what you like and want to do. Good job putting together something you enjoy!

I decorate my mailbox. I am a fan of the indoor/ourdoor battery lights that have a timer. I set them to come on at dusk and go off after I come home from work (11:30pm) and they last the entire Christmas season. If I had to go out and manually turn then off and on, I know I (a) wouldn't bother or (b) have dead batteries by day three from forgetting to turn them off.

@prairiemoon2 - He is very tall and stood on top of the deck while I was on the ground. We passed the string of lights up and down to each other so he could hook to a clip on the top and I’d hook to the bottom. It was fun! He’s a mechanical engineer and loves doing things like this.

We’re storing it standing up with the lights attached when it’s time to take decorations down though - it was freezing yesterday when we finished the lights so are going to lessen work for next year!

That sounds challenging to me. We have trouble just stringing the lights on our Christmas tree wihtout getting it all tangled up. OHHHHhhh... He is a mechanical engineer! Well that makes a big difference! It's nice of you to give him something to do that he loves..lol.

Yes, it started getting cold just as it was time to decorate for Christmas. Hopefully you will get a warm day when it all has to be put away. 😀

I've put decorating outside off until next year. Unless....once I am finished decorating and cleaning the house and doing all my Christmas shopping, I will have enough time to shop for some outside decorations. So we have a good start. Our first year with a small Christmas tree. Last year was the first year we didn't have a tree at all and we missed it, so we thought we'd try a little tree and it really did take a lot less effort and so glad we have it now. So many ornaments are tied to people and events in our lives, that it is a wonderful reminder. Putting the tree together, has ramped up my Christmas spirit and I didn't think it would. I was just about to put the lights on for the night....

The Swan Boats in Boston...

A trip to NY City many years ago...

The oldest ornament on the tree - that was on my Mother's tree when I was small. Has to be 60 years old and survived without being broken because it's made of plastic. lol All the other really nice glass ornaments are long gone.

Wow, PM2 I can't believe you got a five-foot tree for thirty bucks! I live down the street from a Christmas tree farm, one which a lot of New Yorkers come to (Christmas in CT and all lol) and this year prices are more outrageous than usual. My daughter bought a five-footer for $75, and it's much smaller than she or I usually get, so I can't imagine what I will pay this year if I get my usual fat 7-8 footer. I have bought my tree there for over 30 years, even before I moved here, but now I usually go to a smaller tree farm literally next door to it. Prices are slightly cheaper and since I like to support local businesses, I figure they need it more than the bigger farm.

My mom decorated a lot indoors, but not so much outdoors. But living in a rowhouse there wasn't much to decorate anyway lol. A wreath on the door and some lights in the front porch window.

I would love to decorate seasonally, all year, but it is too expensive. I love the hay bales and pumpkins and mums in fall/Thanksgiving, and simple decorations like candles in the windows and a wreath on the door. I think that looks especiallly elegant, classy and stunning on the old colonials, and especially when there is snow on the ground. But I don't do that either because I never seem to have the extra money to spend on fresh greens etc.

But that being said, there is a house a few blocks away that is completely lit up and stunning! LOL my husband calls the guy "the showoff", and on one hand the house is over the top, but he really does quite a nice job - everything is coordinated and crisp and neat and when you drive by at night it is breath-taking. Can't get a photo because he lives in a curve at the top of the hill and there is no place to park (except his driveway lol) and no sidewalks. I think the adult me loves the simple elegance of natural and simple decorations but the kid in me loves the sparkle and bling lol. I guess if I did have money to spend on decorations I'd have to find a balance!

Of course we did a bit more when the kids were little. Not outdoor lights (can't EVER see hubby getting out there to do that!) but window clings, a wreath, and more decorating indoors. For several years we strung popcorn and cranberries which was really fun. We'd put it on our tree as garland and then put it out for the birds and watch them.

And no Christmas til the week before. If all that stuff is up the day after Thanksgiving, by the time Christmas comes it's all part of the furniture and not even special anymore. A week before, leave it up till a bit after new year (extended to celebrate Russian Christmas) and that's enough. Need to keep it special.

:)

Dee

O, I love that idea - cranberries and popcorn, Dee. I may steal that, with a bird garland of my own...

Dee, we didn't shop around at all, but where we usually get a tree is right down the street from us and they are a small independent family run nursery. Really maybe saying a 5ft tree sounds bigger than it is? It's quite a bit smaller than we usually get. It will take some getting used to, but I could easily get used to how quickly and easily we got the lights on and the rest of the decorations. Only I discovered that some of the larger ornaments just didn't look right on it so I'll have to rethink that. Maybe find a different location for it, so there's no comparison to the past larger trees. [g] $75. for what I got sounds laughable.

I would love fresh greens to decorate with and I wish I had planted something that would provide that. I don't seem to have anything I can afford to prune off branches for decorating. I can't bring myself to spend money buying greens beyond the tree and a fresh wreath.

You mentioned cranberries and popcorn stringing, the first year my DH and I were dating, we had a Christmas party with friends and we all strung those. It was a lot of fun and a couple made us clothepin ornaments that represented us. That was 45 years ago and we still have them on the tree. I love natural decorations too. Do the birds eat the cranberries and popcorn?

You mentioned window clings, when we were kids there used to be this window 'wax'? You would have a cut out pattern, like a snowflake and hold it on the window and wipe the liquid over it and it would quickly dry and you'd pull away the 'mold'? and voila, you'd have pretty white snowflakes on your windows. I would like to find that product again, but I haven't found it the few times I've looked.

We put the tree up two weeks before and leave it up until New Year's and out it all goes. If you get a natural tree too early, your floors are covered with needles and it starts to look so dried out.

Here's one video for decorating an outdoor tree...

And I was just thinking, P. Allen Smith is known for decorating with nature, so I found one video and there are probably more...

Here's one more and he's making natural garland ...

One more....some of his ideas sound expensive. Whole cinnamon sticks? Whole apples?

Really pretty greenery in this one...

Most of my outdoor decorations stay up all winter. There is a few that are strictly Christmas decorations that come down. It's usually too cold to be outside dismantling decorations. I use white branches and bamboo in my flower boxes and down at the mailbox. Every other year I cut back my holly and will stick them in also. White grapevine wreaths are on the front door and driveway pillars. In the pots on the front porch is tall white bamboo sticks intertwined with white lights on a timer. That all stays up all winter. The spot light that shines on the front door changes from red back to white after the holidays.

When the kids were young we did alot of outdoor Christmas decorations.

We do a ton inside and minimal outside.

My husband does the lights around the roof and we have Christmas hippos and a unicorn (one year my son decorated his desk at work and did a manger scene and those were his farm animals but he doesn’t decorate at his house so they came to us) We do the wreath and some cute signage that just gets stuck in pots. We’ve got about a hundred of the big

plastic candy canes that the littles and I spread around the garden-they don’t look all that great since the workers bees are 2,3 and 4 but the kids think they look amazing and that’s what matters to me.

We have two fake trees inside. When our kids were growing up but now that our youngest is 16 we have switched to fake and will never go back. SO much easier!

The ornaments are a hodgepodge of memories and they make me emotional every year. I love them.

We also do a large village and snowbabies. Plus the obligatory Christmas pic with Santa that my kids know I expect til I die-when Covid happened my husband had to become Santa so I think my kids (30, 28, 26 and 16) are just thankful they don’t have to go out in public anymore.

I forgot to post pics of the trees

FunctionThenLook - That’s an interesting idea, to have tall bamboo sticks with white lights on a timer.

Oursteelers - It sounds like a lot of fun at your house..lol. Hippos and Unicorns and 100 Candy canes! Do you have grandchildren that help with the candy canes? Is that the reference to ‘the littles’?

My daughter has given me a few Snow Babies to continue a tradition of my Mom being given them. The last one was a polar bear. Maybe you can see it in the middle of the mantel....

Very pretty trees!

Prairie I love your polar bear, I don’t have that one!

The littles are my biological grandson and two grandchildren of my heart. It somehow feels wrong to claim grandchildren that aren’t mine and too wordy to always characterize everyone correctly so I call of them the littles :)

OurSteelers - I just got the polar bear from my daughter last year. I only have 5 all together. My favorite is still the one that belonged to my mom, a snow baby holding a star over it's head, but the Polar Bear is my 2nd. :-) Do you have a favorite?

I love that expression - 'my littles'. [g] Maybe you could write a children's Christmas book about what goes on at your house during the Christmas season. I am picturing 'the littles' distributing 100 candy canes.

Prairie I have two snowbaby snowglobes from my mom that belonged to my mom when she was alive and they are very special but my absolute favorites are the one with four-my husband got that the year our fourth child came. She is ten years younger than the other kids and I made a comment that my previous favorite only had three snowbabies in the grouping. Well he surprised me for Christmas with a figurine of four!

It’s a silly thing but I didn’t want her to feel left out. Anyway, my second one is a dog one that Mark got me the year after we got Piper. She’s our first dog and holds a wildly special place in my heart.

That is a fun idea about the book! Too bad you can’t see them running around, trying to stick the candy canes in the ground. It’s hysterical because they strain with all their might to get them into the ground but I have rocky clay with sections that can be (and were the day we were decorating) frozen.

That’s partly why everything is so catywampus-but it’s okay, they really do, each one of them, think the

ones they did are the best and most fabulous:)

Why can’t I ever remember pictures?

OurSteelers - I didn’t know that they made snow globes too! I’ll have to look for some. I LOVE that snow baby with the 4 carrying the tree. It’s gorgeous! I didn’t know they had multiples either.

I just went looking for the snow globes and I found one on Etsy. What I should be doing is finishing up my Christmas shopping …lol. Look what I found....

I'm Right Behind You

I really think you have the makings of a popular kid's book..lol. A lot of the books they publish are made by someone who is really just telling stories from their own personal experiences. You have the winning ingredients for one.

Oh my gosh that I’m rigjt behind uou is so cute! I took a pic and sent it to my husband😂

I am letting the thread down a bit so I am going to make a foliage decoration for the front door. I like having bunches of stuff from the garden (following the revered cultural tradition of stuffing and plonking).

My garden has gone from perky to woeful overnight.

Looking forward to a photo of a masterpiece, rosaprimula!

DS's DH made these and they sit in by the dining room window so we can all see them. We were just there for Christmas dinner. So I snapped this picture.

My little Christmas tree and it's succulent friend

Yeonassky - Ingenious outdoor decorations! Very early Christmas dinner - trying to fit in all the family get togethers I'd bet.

Getgoing that looks like a Norfolk Pine. Very convenient not to have to buy a fresh tree every day. Is that succulent actually flowering or did you decorate it?

Prairiemoon2 - yes that is a norfolk pine. It becomes the Christmas tree every year around this time. Those straw flowers are the Christmas decoration. I wish that sedum has not produced flowers for me ever. IT needs a lot more light for that and the flowers are white and not as pretty. :) I think strawflowers are used to "grow" those colorful flowers you see on assorted cacti in the big box stores. That's where I got my inspiration.

Yeonassky - those really look like reindeer at first glance.

GetGoing - I can't get a succulent to bloom in my house either. Not enough light.

I found another link to a YouTube video on decorating the house with natural materials.

I am really late to this party - I moved in November and visited family for 10 days in December, so I haven’t visited here at all. At my previous very rural home, I filled planters with cut branches from the woods (evergreen, birch, and either red dogwood or red maple stump sprouts), on each door hung a wreath that I got from the local school and added pine cones, berries, and ribbons, and usually I had some type of low key outdoor lights such as covering one of my garden trellises or wrapping some of my spiral tomato stakes with lights. As long as DH was alive we also always had window candles. Winter in NH is long and dark, and I lived on a road that was busy during commuter times, so I left all outdoor things up until March.

In my new suburban neighborhood, I found a wreath to buy, was gifted a pot of seasonal branches to which I have added as neighbors pruned evergreens and left the branches by the curb for pickup. One outdoor light is white and the other green, and I added a lighted evergreen swag between the front windows. And I filled one of my smaller garden obelisks with red and gold plastic ornaments and plonked it down in my front garden. Most of that will stay up for a while here also, though the obelisk and green light will get put away. Most of my neighborhood does decorate with outdoor lights, and one neighbor has an outdoor display of lights that is computer controlled and set to music (happily that visitors tune their car radios to so no one else has to hear it). Visitors come from all over town to see it, but other than a small uptick in traffic, there is’t much impact. I rather like watching the changing colors from inside the comfort of home.

Years that I am home for Christmas I decorate a tree, but this year instead of any indoor decorating I unpacked boxes and worked on getting my kitchen set upnd useable. I may get a small artificial tree for years that I am not here for the holiday, since I enjoy having a tree but hesitate to have a real one that is likely to dry out if I am away for the holiday.

I decorated outside for Christmas, and took every last thing down yesterday; wreaths on every window, a nativity scene, a lit deer family, LED orbs, twinkling lights and garland and bows, all packed away until next year. I love the holiday season, but am always very glad when it’s finally over.

Hi Babs! You made your move! Excellent! I’m amazed you had enough energy after all that to decorate for Christmas. I’m sure you had a great holiday visiting with all your family.

Seasonal branches was a great gift. Was that from a neighbor? I’m always sorry I don’t have the kind of shrubs and trees in the yard that I could cut branches from for the holidays.This is going to be a big change for you to go from rural living to a neighborhood with neighbors so close by. It sounds like a nice neighborhood and I bet you will enjoy having people closer.

We have a neighbor that did the music one year and didn’t do it again. Now he does just the moving lights against the house and we find that easy and interesting.

We debated putting up a tree this year, since we were not going to be having any of the kids here, a lot of family members were sick. We finally decided to have a much smaller tree, but, in the end, it was not as enjoyable without everyone. I am considering not having one next year. I just really didn’t enjoy putting it all away, either. [g]

LoveMyCorgi - We fnished putting away the last of Christmas and clean up yesterday. The wreath is up on the door and that’s it. I’m happy to be starting a new year, just as I am every year. Fresh start. Lol

My oven door exploded about 5 minutes after I put the Xmas beef to roast. We rigged up some plywood substitute and had a very attenuated dinner. Seemed like an appropriate metaphor for 2022 (and every year, chez r.primula) - Bodge and dodge.

Hey, glad you are settled and sorted, Babs. Moving house is right up there in stress level lists. Survived another year.

PM - you are always such an engaged poster. Rare and lovely in our social media age.

I would love to pack away the few outdoor decorations, but if it hasn't been snowing, it's been raining. You can't pack away wet stuff.

It's not raining or snowing here, somewhat warm and I have the time. I wonder if putting the lights on for Valentine's Day counts as an excuse to leave things out longer.

'You can't pack away wet stuff' is right, and maybe there's a little too much damp in the air today to do it ;)