Christmas Decorations are either done or in the works..

I have't fully decided yet if I'm actually finished decorating the house or not.  I got a late start to decorating this year because I was wiped out the day after Thanksgiving and, well, I needed a new tree and I was waiting to see if I had won a tree in a contest I entered.  I didn't win and so I ran out and picked up a new pre-lit tree on Wednesday.  I found a nice one at Walmart for $98, full price.  It's a bit smaller than my old tree but it has lights on it, which is important.  That means 3 hours of not stringing lights on the tree.  So since I got such a late start and since I have a lot of baking to do, I rushed through decorating Thursday and Friday afternoon.

I do want to decorate the railing since I'm having friends over on the 28th for a cookie exchange.  But I don't know how much energy I'll actually have for it.  The plus side to being so busy this year, is that I'm not doing lights for Christmas eve services since they fall the weekend my regular team is up, and there will be 2 days of services and there will be 6 services, between the two days, I think. Plus I'm baking cookies for church and the day they're due,there's a singles Christmas party that I'm thinking of going to.  Like, unless I forget or am too tired, I'm going to.

With that said, some pictures of the tree....

My mom's snowman family, all set to greet visitors when they enter the house.

My new wreath, I had been wanting to make a new one for awhile now but didn't know what I wanted to do.  I'll take better pictures one day when it's light out, and I don't use the flash.  I don't like the way the flash washes it out. 

My pretty vintage angel that had been tucked away in a shoe box for years, waiting for new lights. 

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree...

A little video of my Christmas tree, enjoy!

Organization

In an effort to have a better handle on my Christmas decorations this year I decided to do something a bit different. Rather than just roll up my Christmas lights on an empty paper towel roll and call it a day, I decided to write the date on the roll so that I knew what year I bought those lights.

The reason being is because I've had lights for years but I couldn't remember what year I purchased them. It's frustrating because they all needed to be replaced since only about 2 strands worked. So I bought 6 100 count strands of lights and my tree was nice and evenly lit. Of course all those new lights will be obsolete when I finally buy a prelit tree, but who knows when that will happen.

Then again I can just shift the purspose of those lights to other areas of the house once I have the new tree. But I have plenty of time before that. In addition to buying new lights for the tree, while packing everthing up I found I had to buy a new strand of twinkling lights because one of the two strands we have, only has half working lights. One half of the strand is burnt out completely. Which explained a few things like why I'd see a random light or two flashing towards the bottom of the tree. I use twinkling lights in the center of the tree and the stationary lights go on the outer branches. So instead of just buying one box, I bought two since they had a few and were 50% off.

Now that everything is fully boxed, it's all back in the storage room and looking close to what it did when I first rearranged that entire room and reorganized everything.