Our Christmas Prep!

First, I apologize for the horrid photographs! I am hoping Santa brings me a new camera, but it is doubtful at this point, lol. Until Santa can get adequate funds together, I am using my iPhone camera which is notorious for substandard photos. It's good for a lot of things, pictures aren't one of them!

It has been getting into the 28-32 degree range at night (finally!) so we had sufficient Christmas spirit to decorate the house. Here's a little tour of our preparations!

There's Finnegan decorating our skinny tree, everything must be skinny to fit in this house, lol!

Teaching Finnegan the art of stringing popcorn & cranberries!

On the right is Finn's bowl of pinecones and ornaments. I must admit it is just what I would have done! Our house is what I would call "modern-cabin" (an oxymoron, I know), so traditional red & green and excess stuff everywhere really doesn't match the house, so we develop our Christmas style as we go every year!

Yes, Mama Pea, that thing with the orange flag on it is exactly what you think it is, lol! My husband is not big on Christmas decor, but he does like this particular piece of winter on the shelf. Sometimes I catch him looking at it longingly, I wonder if he is waiting for the flag to trip on that imaginary muskie swimming around the living room!

For our table we just used pinecones, we have bags and bags of them, and Loch had a good idea to fill a glass with cranberries!

Here's a view of the kitchen, we have to decorate "up high" so we don't take up too much space, so I put this up in all the doorways. My husband laughs at my garish blue tinsel and lights on the back wall over our "homebrew bar". I was going for "dive bar"... what local small town bar doesn't have garish tinsel all over at Christmas, and globs of icicles and lights draped up around mooseheads and rack mounts LOL?

Here's the back deck, I always decorate the backyard instead of the front, since that is where we tend to entertain, as long as the weather cooperates and the wind is faint enough to have a roaring fire in the firepit.

Garish kiddie decorations are okay out here!

It will be a "Traditional Military Christmas" this year, that is, Christmas Eve & Christmas Day surrounded by friends and people we share no relation to whatsoever! Every person we know hails from a different part of the country, so it's always a tradition surprise at someone's house every year! It makes it fun, and it is very low stress and usually a pot luck affair, with stragglers showing up throughout as they get off duty, etc. It is always a collection of very different personalities thrown together by circumstance, and is always a time to meet new friends as well as those we have been stationed with for a long time. Although sometimes these are loose relationships due to frequent moving and deployments, military friends are those you can call on after 20 years of being apart and you are still welcomed with open arms and offers of help if needed. We all understand what it is like to be away from your family over the holidays, so we make our own gypsy family, and the kids will still have many memories of these Holiday Gatherings.

"Happy Decorating" to all! I am a sucker for holiday decorations and would love to see yours, keep the photos coming!