Christmas Lights Lighting up our home for Christmas is something I look forward too every holiday. I can honestly say we have inspired our neighborhood too. When we moved in, no one had lights outside. Now about 5 other houses are joining in by stringing lights outside and I love it! If I had my way, our neighborhood would be completely filled and there'd be a group tour of our holiday spirirt! Icicle lights are strung all around the perimeter of our home. This is what kicked off my lighting urge. Then we do the porch and decide how far to go from there. Last year we added a family of life sized deer. Which proved to be a bit high maintenance due to the windy conditions we keep getting. Greg had to use tent stakes to reinforce "Dad" because the spot I allocated for him, apparently is a wind tunnel. Sorry honey. He also swags the fence on the inside of our property and lines the garden beds with lights as well! I tried holding out for snow to get some really sweet loo......

Christmas Porch - Decorating Outside for Christmas on a Budget Decorating outside for me is the pinnacle of the holiday season as far as decorating goes. Once I finish the porch, I feel like I can relax.   Each year my blonde brain comes up with a pretty good idea and depending on how much I like it, I may repeat it. The large 48" tall wreath is a prime example as we hung it in the same spot as last year. Of course it was my husbands idea, but I said yes to it. Being blonde I also had my pre-christmas reminder go off on my phone in October to tell me that it was time to browse the thrift stores for holiday ornaments. a week later while out browsing one, I found 10 to 12 boxes of red ornaments probably dating back to the 70's. Definitely shiny and definitely breakable. The highest price for one box was two bucks, so I make no apologies for my premature christmas joy. I bought every single box. Yes I am a early Christmas decor purchaser. I'm the blonde walking down the stree......

Outdoor Christmas Decorations |   Christmas decorating outside the home is a bit more challenging to me. I always face a few dilemmas that if I don't tackle them, they irk me. The first one is I am not a blow up doll person as far as holiday decorating goes. My kids are grown and even if they weren't I still would not buy blow up decorations. They are cute and all, but my style is bit more adult. They just are not my style. If you have ever seen a 100 deflated Christmas elves all laying flat in someone's yard, you probably understand. It looks like some kind of comical holiday massacre. Hey! Now that would be a fun holiday vignette for men wouldn't it? Imagine 20 or so, deflated reindeer with a giant G.I. Joe pointing a plastic rifle at them. Or an Elmer Fudd statue dressed in camouflage going hunting. Now that's an idea for the backyard A holiday hunting spree. I like my decor to look good in the daylight as well as nighttime. That's a huge challenge to me. Gre......

Christmas Porch Ideas | Decorating my front porch for Christmas is one of the things I look forward to most. It's also the one area I agonize over too.  If you knew how many times this porch has been changed in the past 3 weeks, you'd laugh.  Several times! I knew I wanted to bring the blue plaid back out. I knew the rockers were going to stay put. But the brick wall? Yeah that gave me heartburn. I think I finally found something that I love. I finished this porch on a day that our temperatures were running about 4 degrees outside. That was my level of commitment to get this done and I am so glad I did. Last night we got another round of lake effect snow. So there literally is another 7 to 8 inches of snow on this porch right now. Which is fine by me, Christmas isn't Christmas unless there is snow outside! I filled the lanterns with plastic blue ornaments and tied some ribbon and plaid to them as well. Instead of a wreath on the door I used a large moss cov......