It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas...on the Inside of Our House

As I promised here, here are pictures of the Christmas decorating inside our house:

We start by putting up our Christmas tree, assembly required:

Yes, we are a Fake Tree family.

We didn't used to be. Back when it was just Jas and I, that is.

In Colorado, we were even known to go out and chop down a tree ourselves.

But now there are kids...and only one income.

This tree - purchased at an After-Christmas sale - paid for itself by it's second use.

The children are old enough to be so excited now...and to remember all the ornaments and decorations as we pull each of them out.

"I made this in Sunday School last year!"

"So-and-so gave me this ornament last year!"

They did all the decorating by themselves this year. (With a wee-little adjustment help by Jas and I...otherwise the tree would have fallen over because they put all the ornaments front-and-center!)


See Noah's feet behind the tree in the corner? This was after we told them to start spreading the ornaments around the tree more.

Our tree is primarily filled with handmade ornaments - from the balls and cross-stitched ornaments that my mom made 30 years ago to the ones my children make each year at church and at home.

You won't see our tree in Southern Living or Better Homes and Gardens...but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Daniel and Noah back behind the tree, in the corner. They had to slide under the tree to get back there. This picture makes me crack up.




This is Lily Kay's first Christmas home.

But she is acting like an old hand at it. She definitely jumped in there to help decorate the tree.

And had fun doing it.


She even got to put our angel up on top of our tree. (With just a little help from daddy.)

After becoming a believer 11 years ago now...I weeded the Santa decorations out of our Christmas decorations, focusing instead on decorations that highlight Jesus and His birth.

So, now we decorate mainly with nativity scenes.



And we have a few.

I use the term "few" loosely.

Like 4 on the hearth (the children chose to put all of these on the hearth, I usually spread them out more than that)....

Here they combined two nativity sets and gathered all the figures around TWO Baby Jesus!



Here is a nativity on our coffee table.

And a Music box nativity on our coffee table.

And another Music box nativity on our coffee table.


And here is a nativity on one of our end tables.

And another nativity on our other end table.

(Just to clarify: The reason I zoomed in so much on all the nativity scenes was so that the pictures were very clear...it had nothing to do with me trying to hide the fact that my tables were badly in need of dusting. Nope.)