It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!!!!!

I interrupt my regular schedule to bring you this special post. To say I'm a HUGE Christmas fan is an understatement. I love everything there is to love about Christmas, from the tree to the decorations to the food to the presents...basically Everything! When I was first married I would scrounge around for cheap decorations for my tree, but as we got older I just got more and more things to decorate with. Now (29+ years later) I decorate almost my entire house. Currently I have 15 decorated trees in my house. Yes...15! There is one in almost every room. The only room that doesn't have a tree is my spare bedroom (which I hope to remedy before my daughter comes to stay with us next week). So, I thought I would share a tour of my house. I'll start in the garage. I actually moved a tree into the garage this year. I started to think, Hot Rod and I enter and exit our house through the garage so shouldn't we be greeted by Christmas as soon as we come home? Why should everyone else get a festive greeting and not us. So, the Harley tree got moved to the garage this year. Yes, this is a Harley tree. We are such bikers and biker fans it was a no-brainer that we would have a tree dedicated to our main passion, motorcycles and Harley's in particular. Isn't it just so cute?

Now, entering into the house from the garage the first room you come to is the game room. Actually this year is my first year to put the village on the pool table. I started collecting the village pieces about 10-15 years ago and it has now grown to a thriving metropolis! It's no longer a small village with a couple of buildings, but a hustling and bustling town. I always think that Silver Bells should be playing! I have a few new additions to the village this year. The band is new as well as the brewery and the Irish pub. I have a rule to my village. Anyone is free to move people around but you have to have a story to go with it. So far there aren't many takers though. I guess I'm really the only one that actually thinks of all of the people as real people and the village as a real town. I know, I know...I'm crazy!

In the corner of the gameroom are the snowman trees. In the past I had a large snowman tree in my entry but I really shook things up this year. I retired quite a bit of things I've had and trimmed down the rest. However, a few things actually grew, starting with my Santa Claus collection. My Santa tree was promoted to the big tree in the entry and I decided to move the snowman tree to the game room but as 3 separate trees. I don't care who you are, you have to just put a smile on your face when you see snowmen. They are co cute! Don't you agree?

Leaving the game room, let's go back to the front of the house. This is the view that greets visitors to the front of our house. The 2 trees at the front door were given to us by Hot Rod's parents last year. They actually are supposed to be this large arch so there is a piece that goes between the trees and forms an arch. Unfortunately my porch is not tall enough for the arch but I still wanted to use the trees. Also unfortunately the trees just sort of stop at the top and not in a nice point either, they are flat at the top (where the arch actually connects to them) so my challenge was how to use them but make them look good with a flat top like that? Solution, make a really pretty topper that forms the peak that I'm looking for. I got the idea from another blogger and actually used it on the outside trees and my big "main" tree too. I really love it! These trees don't really have a bunch of things on them, just a few Christmas picks and lights, but I think they are perfect for outdoors. The wreaths are the same I've had for going on 5 years now I believe. I still love them and will probably use them for many years to come.

Now, coming into the house is my entry room. I have the Santa tree on the left when you enter. I love Santa Clauses and this tree has nothing but different Santa ornaments we've collected over the years. Santa Claus is just so...Christmas!

Actually this entire room is dedicated to Santa Clauses! The book case has all of the pictures of my kids with Santa over the years, all in different frames.
I also have a china cabinet in our entry which I empty out and take out the glass doors every year. I use it as my display cabinet for my nativity scenes. My newest addition is the Peanuts set. They are adorable aren't they? Not only that but their hats come off and their arms and legs move.

Moving along, next is what I refer to as "the piano room". We don't have a mantel in our house so I use the the top of the piano as our "mantel". Our stockings are hung here and this is one of the places where I really go "all out" in my definition. I didn't really count these trees either in the 15 trees in the house. So, if you do count them then the total goes up to 19 trees. :)

If you turn to the left from the piano you will see my dining room table. I keep it decorated throughout the season. My color scheme for most of the house this year is Red and Gold and I kept with those colors on the table. I like using chargers on the table because it gives the impression that the table is set but the dishes aren't out getting dusty.

I also changed out my "Thankful" wall hanging to go with the season. I love it! The colors of course match everything else. I just love this thing. It gives me a chance to change things out once a month without really changing a whole lot.

Moving on to the living room. This is the grand daddy of them all of trees. I changed this year to the red, gold, and white theme. I left quite a few ornaments off that didn't fit the color scheme this year. Normally my big tree has all of the ornaments we've collected over the years but I just wanted to do something different this year. I love it too! We had an angel at the top of our tree since my kids were babies. However, with this tree she never really sat well at the top of it. The top of the tree was just to big to fit in the small hole on the bottom of the angel. I sort of made it work for the last couple of years but this year I got a new idea from a fellow blogger and decided to go with it for the top of the tree this year. I went to Hobby Lobby, picked out a few decorative "flowers" and other type of things. I found these in the single flower section, not the Christmas section. I was hoping to find a long white feather but they didn't have that so I settled for the red ones. I think they add that special touch. The Merry Christmas at the top I actually made. I was hoping to find the wooden and decorated Merry Christmas but the ones in Hobby Lobby were all gone except for 2 broken ones. I looked at Wal-Mart and they didn't have a single thing so I decided to make my own. I bought the individual letters at Hobby Lobby in the unpainted wood section. I used Gorilla glue and glued the letters together to form the words. Then I spray painted them red. They actually held too. They are a little fragile but they held together and I just placed the words at the top. The branches hold it in place. The presents are wrapped in a pattern as well. I choose a separate wrapping paper for each family. My oldest daughter and son-in-law have one paper, my youngest daughter and son-in-law have a different paper, and me and my husband have a third paper. I wrap presents for other family members also in coordinating papers, but I keep them under the Santa Claus tree in the front room to make it easier when we go to our parents for Christmas time. I can just grab presents by the paper and go. It is super easy this way and it also looks really good too. I spent quite a bit of time on the wrapping this year. We are not giving as many gifts this year because we are taking the kids to New York for the week after Christmas so I wanted the gifts to be extra pretty instead!

I bought these snowflakes last year after Christmas at Pier One for $1.75 each! What a deal! At the time I thought I would paint them white but when I got them out this year I just really loved the natural wood with the glitter on them. I set them on our coffee table and just surrounded them with some fake greenery and a couple of silk poinsettias to go along with the big tree in the room. I like how it turned out. Simple but elegant.

So, from here we go back through the dining room and into the kitchen. The kitchen tree is all about kitchen stuff. I found most of the ornaments from LTD one year. There are eggs, pans, muffins, etc. Since then I've found a few more kitchen type ornaments to add to it too. I decided to use kitchen towels for the tree skirt this year too. I thought it just went well with the kitchen theme! I finally found a topper for the tree but I took this picture before I got it. I found this cute gingerbread face with a chef's hat on it and scarf. It looks super cute so fear not, even though the tree doesn't have a topper here, it does now! I'll try and post more pictures of it later. I also put a table runner on the table and scattered some pecans along the base of the tree too.

Leaving the kitchen is my room. Now this tree still needs a little love. I just am not feeling it. It's what I call the "romance" tree. It has browns and golds to match my room. I'm just not happy though. I think it still needs...something. I'm going to add some ribbon and see what that does. What do you think? What does it "need"?

The hall bathroom in our house has a red, black, and white color scheme year round. The walls are red and the black and white are thrown in with accessories, towels, shower curtain, floor, etc. So, what goes in a red, black, and white room? A Texas Tech tree of course! We are Tech fans all the way so we had to have a TTU tree! I just can't believe how expensive college sanctioned ornaments are though! They are so proud of those puppies. I have a few but then I also added just some generic red and black ornaments. My daughter also made me some painted glass ball ornaments as well. I finally found a topper for this tree too! Yippee Skippy! I've been looking for one for this tree for going on 3 years now and I finally found something I liked. It's a snowman face with a TTU hat on and he's holding a little frame that says Go Red Raiders. Again, I'll take a new picture soon and post it now that this tree is no longer topless! ha ha ha

After the bathroom is my scrapbook room. This tree is what I call the "handmade" tree. Every ornament on this tree was made by my inlaws. They started making ornaments for everyone in 1982. We've received an ornament every year since then. They are all made out of wood and they cut them out and paint them. I put the star at the top of the tree this year. I hadn't thought of using it before as the topper and it just came to me this year to use it as the topper. I think it's so cute too.

And...last but certainly not least is the laundry room. These are probably my favorite trees besides my main tree. I just think they are so adorable. There are 3 trees in here. Each tree has a clothesline garland wrapped around it. One has Santa's laundry on it, one has Mrs. Clause's laundry, and one has the elf's laundry! I found a stuffed Santa, Mrs. Santa, and Elf to top the trees too. They are waiting for their laundry to dry. I want to find some more "Santa clothes" to pile up on the base of the trees as their skirt but I haven't found any yet. I thought it would look really cute to have laundry piled up like they are waiting to be washed. I got the garlands from Avon (I sell Avon too) but they don't have them anymore. I could kick myself for not buying more of them when I had the chance too. The "clothes" are actually on the lines with real mini clothespins so if I had the foresight to get more of them I could have taken them off the lines and just used them to pile up as the tree skirt to make it look like loads of laundry. I even thought of making one pile the darks, one the lights, and one the "handwash undies". But...alas, I'm outta luck. I'm going to see if I can find them on ebay or Craigs list or something though. I seriously WANT more of them!

So, that's it. That is a tour of my Christmas inspired house. I hope you got some good ideas out of it or if not I hope you just got a smile out of it and it put you in a Christmas mood. I know that is what it does to me each time I walk through the doors!

Merry Christmas!