Our House At Christmas

Here are some pictures of our house at Christmas...The outside is done pretty much the same every year. It is about all we can do. We keep the decorations on the front porch, so we can take them down easily in the cold weather of January. The snowflakes in the window are across the front of the house in each window. Here is our Manger scene. It sits on the end table by the couch. It is one that I love.

Our little tree in the living room. It is filled with mostly Joe's ornaments. The windows all have wreaths hanging on the lace curtains.

My Christmas village is on the hutch in the dining room. It's so pretty in the dining room at night with all the lights off and just the village lights on. Tweety sits next to the village this year. He loves the little twinkling lights.

Here is the little tree in the breakfast nook. It has many of my Mom and Dad's ornaments on it. My rocker sits next to it...I love to sit here in the early morning, before the sun comes up with the tree lights on.

We have other things around. I will try to take pictures later this week. Gingerbread men in the kitchen, and big fiber optic snowman, a snowman who plays the piano, and snow babies on the guest bathroom shelves. Our house is decorated very simply....the way we like it now.

One of saddest sights of Christmas is to see Christmas trees out at the curb on December 26. Some Catholics do not take down their Christmas trees and other Christmas decorations until January 7, the day after Epiphany. The twelve days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day; the period before that is Advent. the time of preparation for Christmas. The twelve days of Christmas end on Epiphany, the day that the Three Wise Men came to pay homage to the Baby Jesus. We follow that old tradition.

We put our tree up during the Advent season. At our age, it takes so much time and effort to do the simple decorating that we do. This gives us time to really enjoy our efforts.

Balisha