Less is definitely more

Yes, I've been absent a lot lately. Seems like I had wonderful intentions this week having been off work since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving but....

I've been doing lots of work with the calves that we are showing next week, a fair amount of shopping with my Mom and my Grandmother, and TONS of knitting and quilting. I can say that I do have most of my Christmas crafting and shopping done (or in the case of the Christmas crafting, I know what I am making and have the supplies to make it). It's not going to be a lavish Christmas by any means but we will make some memories.

But today, I decided I had really better get it in gear and get out my Christmas decorations. Seeing as I have to go back to work on Monday, we will be at a steer show in Columbus next weekend Friday through Sunday and Christmas will be here before you know it.

This is about a 1/8 of the containers of my Christmas decorations (I have 6 big totes and about 9 or 10 copy paper boxes). I think I put out about 1/2 of this.

I decided this year I am ONLY putting out stuff that I truly love and that has special memories/meaning to us. As a result, what used to take me 3 solid days of putting out decorations took me about.....2 hours.

This Santa is supposed to sit on a vacuum cleaner ("Sweeper Santa"). However, due to the little people in the house, it is a pain in the you know what to have to take the Santa off the sweeper to vacuum every day. Or even several times a day on the weekends.

I decided to put some garland up here and there - if I can figure out how to attach it to the house siding WITHOUT putting holes in the siding, one of these garlands will go around our back door.

Normally I would have 3 shelves like this loaded to the hilt.

This Santa I made a few years ago - he just sits on a wooden dowl rod. Todd needs to cut the dowl rod shorter and put some sort of wooden base underneath him.

I still need to put out my life size Santa and hang 3 Christmas wallhangings that I have made over the years, and I am pretty sure the Christmas tree is going up this weekend. I have lights hung outside the house (I thought about hanging lights on the chicken coop and that may still get done but for right now, I'm doing good.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend. It's been in the 60's here most days........

Kris