I usually start decorating the day after Thanksgiving but I like to have my house clean first so I spent all day Friday cleaning and getting boxes out. By the time I finished cleaning, we had to go somewhere and I ran out of time to put up the decorations. When I finally found some time to put up the Christmas stuff two days later, my house was messy all over again (shocker, I know!) I decided not to fall victim to this vicious cycle and so I just decorated my house amid all the dirt and clutter.
I love Christmas villages from Dept. 56 and I have quite a few collectible houses that I have gotten over the years but I refuse to display them because my beautiful sweet children will shatter them into bits and pieces in about 3 minutes. So I only unpack a few and scatter them throughout unreachable places in my house.

The tree is the first thing I put up. I was a little worried about the condition of it because this summer a huge frog got trapped in our garage and thought my tree box would make a nice home. Dale had to wrestle it out of there and the box did not fare so well from the fight. But lo and behold all is well. Here it is all decorated:


But it's not finished yet:

Now we're good! Doesn't the lovely "holiday" baby gate just add to the Christmas ambiance?