Christmas has puked on Kenzie's house!

..and it's something I'm so excited about..that I'll write this post for the third friggin' time. The entire post keeps magically disappearing when I try to preview it. Silly me - is not even going to glance at the preview button this time....



I absolutely love Thanksgiving, but I think that most of my passion for that holiday is born of our tradition to decorate for Christmas the very next day. Kenzie and I were up bright and early on Friday tearing apart the house - in order to do this to it. My little family has moved every two years. From Kansas City, MO to Fresno, CA; to San Diego, CA; and back to the Midwest again (all in a four year span). And with the sale of three houses, they've always been on the market during the holiday season. So, I have not been able to give my Christmas decor the full gusto each of those years.



This year, Christmas has truly puked on my house. It looks gorgeous, despite the fact that we haven't yet gotten new paint on {more than} several walls. Because I can't preview this post (see above) and I have no idea which pictures fell where... so a summary of them is:
1. The mantle in our great room. Disregard the TV. Disregard the Husband watching the TV. If it hadn't been the "game of the year" I WOULD have made him shut it off, adjust the lighting, start a fire, and straighten the room a bit more. :) I still have a Santa collection which needs to nestle on the mantle.
2. Collections. I guess I should speak of them a bit. Somehow, I've managed to collect a great many Christmas things due to my mom and mom-in-law's generosity. I have Santa Clause collections, snow man ones, snow globes, nutcrackers, etc. I tend to sit everything with the rest of it's collection - on top of garland strung with lights, pinecones, fakey cranberry things, and silver glass balls. They are everywhere! So, here are just a few peaks at some of my favorite spots. I forgot to photo the dining room and the stairway banister which is garnished to the hilt. Heck, we even have Christmas in the bathroom!!!



I think I'm most excited about this pending holiday since Kenzie is 2.5, and this is the first year where she really, really "gets" things like this. She "oooohed and aaaaahed" so many times amidst the decorating extravaganza, and actually can keep her mitts off of the decorations that I tell her to leave alone. We did take a few spare decorations into her room even. We have lots of kid friendly things that she is able to play with all she wants though.



This year is important to me. We've got to do everything right now that she's formally paying attention. Like: the timing of the gift opening (Xmas Eve, Xmas morn?), the presents (does Santa wrap his gifts? Does he bring many? Or just one really special one?), etc. Finally, we're in the midst of memory making years and I find it humbling and horribly important to do things in a way that she'll be proud and excited about. Doug and I went shopping tonight and bought a decent load of gifts for the girl. We also had a nice dinner to ourselves, where we talked about our immediate family traditions and realized that we grew up doing things differently. Completely differently. So, we'll have to mix and mingle the traditions we both love best and design our own approach.

How do YOU do things? What are your favorite traditions? And, thanks in advance to anyone who offers insights.
Merry holiday decorating to you!!!