<p>^^That’s AMAZING!</p>
<p>My mother was my hero. She had a full staircase to the attic, and would take her artificial tree, ornaments and all, upstairs ready to go the next year. Brilliant.</p>
<p>Gotta say, I have the LED “cool white” lights and I love them. They look so twinkly on a cold winter night, and especially look nice when it snows.</p>
<p>I thought it was only me having trouble taking the “stuff” out of the bins. The tree is decorated, but most all of the other stuff is still in the sterilite bins in my dining room. I can’t bring myself to put everything out, yet can’t bring myself to put the (still full) bins back in the attic either. So my Christmas decorations consist of my outside lights, Christmas tree, and red-topped sterilite bins. Ho ho ho.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that over the years we have built up quite an ornament collection. I have an ornament box for each child so when they are ready to set up their own households we can just hand them over.</p>
<p>I delegated this year. I told D2 that she is in charge of designing our holiday tablescape, I put D1 in charge of the outdoor decorations, and S (age 13) and I are doing the tree. The only non-negotiables are (1) the nativity sculpted by my mother before I was born, (3) their baby’s first Christmas ornaments, and (3) the collection of Snoopys that my S has gotten for me every year. Otherwise, I’m excited to see what they all will do.</p>
<p>We store in plastic bins also. There are a couple of bins that I rarely get into anymore but can’t quite part with. Giving the kids a plastic bin and letting them “have at it” is a great idea. </p>
<p>One thing I do do is to take a couple of plastic bins and put the stuff I do ALWAYS put out - and pack them in these bins so at the very least, I can unpack those couple of bins and then decide if I want to venture any further.</p>
<p>I’ve gone with more simple, neutral decorations over the years…silver snowflakes I’ve collected over the years are hung on loops of silver and gold ribbon and I drape them over lights, chandeliers, garland along with ornaments here and there on ribbon. Each year, I just pull out the looped snowflakes and scatter them about hanging them on various fixtures. Snowflakes can go into January pretty easily. And rather than go outside to decorate the window that is big and in the center of the house, I decorate the chandelier inside and turn it on to glow outward at night. I gave up on lights in the upper windows since it was annoying with the on/off stuff and went with candles in the lower window that go off in light. As I type, the dog sent one flying as he crashed into the window to bark at real deer cruising and dining in the front yard. </p>
<p>Outside, I keep it very simple after the years of the darn reindeer decorations that needed to have their feet securely anchored into the ground. One year we had an extremely blustery wind and snow storm that knocked the deer over 45 degrees. It was at least 6 weeks before I could haul those fallen frozen reindeer back to the shed - they looked pitiful for Christmas knocked over like they’d been shot.</p>
<p>I am from India but i love Christmas. On Christmas i decorate my full house and when any gives me suggestion regarding decoration, i apply them in my home decoration. Mostly i use Christmas ornaments like stars, wooden buckets, ribbons, and beautiful color lights.</p>
<p>
We retired the lighted reindeer after the year some neighbors - we never found out who - kept arranging them in, um, unusual positions. I could see why someone might consider it amusing (especially if it had happened in someone else’s yard, lol), but it was annoying to have to lug the things back into place. We should have anchored them instead, but the snow was deep by the time we realized that the neighbors were having too much fun to stop.</p>
<p>That’s too funny, frazzled1. </p>
<p>I miss the real evergreen & cedar boughs we strung up years ago along the railing and mantel and on the porches. It really was lovely, but $200 for enough of it just isn’t a go on top of everything else. Probably more $ by now. Smelled great, though.</p>
<p>And I don’t think I’ll be looking for a home version of this lovely tradition:
<a href=“http://hypervocal.com/culture/2011/barcelonas-holiday-pooping-peasant-statue-is-worlds-largest-statue-of-pooping-peasant/[/url]”>http://hypervocal.com/culture/2011/barcelonas-holiday-pooping-peasant-statue-is-worlds-largest-statue-of-pooping-peasant/</a></p>
<p>^OMG! Merry P**py Christmas?!@!</p>
<p>There is a family in my community whose house sits on a very steep, narrow, winding hill (but is a main thoroughfare) with a huge front yard. In their front yard, they have a family of fake deer doing deer things. The thing is that we live in an area with a significant real deer population and these aren’t the festive, kitschy things, they look incredibly real and as you’re driving it looks like they’re going to run into the road! It’s caused several accidents and my daughter passes there every day on her way to work and she actually tells herself out loud to remember that the deer are there so she doesn’t slam on her brakes. </p>
<p>There’s another family in the same area (this is the area with multi-million dollar homes in which the former godfather, Paul Castellano lived) who has all sorts of life-sized creatures in their yard all the time. Wild animals, people, characters, whatever. Their yard is surrounded by a five-foot wrought iron fence and there are several large trees right inside the fence which hang over. Last year, they decided to hang a life-sized person from one of the trees over the fence and above the road. When covered by the newspaper, they said it was meant to be Tarzan in communion with their wild animals. It looked like a lynching.</p>
<p>I hate those people.</p>
<p>Definitely a
“certain” kind
of entertainment
for some</p>
<p>Not
my
sense of humor</p>
<p>Z-mom: one year my Ds (ages 5 and 3) went out trick or treating with my parents (in thier late 60’s). They decided to hit the mansion neighborhood for some looky loo-ing.
I stayed home to give out candy at our house.
They returned less than 30 minutes later. I was surprised to see them return so early, and noticed that the plastic pumpkins were not very full. Their faces said it all. They were ashen white.
I asked what happened. Apparently they rushed home after entering the outdoor patio of a large, impressive home to be greeted by… a hand that looked completely real, fingers moving, with the cut marks at the wrist, oozing a little blood.</p>
<p>Obviously a gag, but it made them all gag.
Halloween ended very quickly that year…</p>
<p>Gallows humor is certainly more appropriate at that time of year, I know I know! For Christmas???!!!</p>