Good morning all.
Christmas tree. I do a real tree, white flocked. I'm just a tad anal about Christmas. My family calls me the Christmas Nazi and says that I suck the joy out of the holiday season with my anal decorating. I start the day after Thanksgiving. Tree is done first and it takes about 4 days to complete. My main interior house color is eggplant (not on the walls) so I had 250 glass Christmas ornaments painted in a custom eggplant color that exactly matches the color in my window coverings. Each ornament is hung on a gold ribbon that was matched from the trim on my sofa accent pillows. I also use angel ornaments and crystal icicles to accent the tree. All of my presents that go under the tree will coordinate with these colors.
After the 4 days on the tree, I then take down all of my artwork in the entire house (and I have some huge pieces of art) and wrap them in wrapping paper with bows and put them back on the walls so that they look like Christmas presents. Each room in the house has a different theme--snowman, angel, nutcracker, santa, etc. and the paper has to match that theme. I'm always on the lookout for paper.
Then I decorate each room in the theme. I have about 55 storage boxes full of decorations.
Last to be done are my dolls. I collect very high-end German dolls that are anywhere from 2 1/2 - 3 feet tall. I have 45 of them. They all have Christmas outfits so I have to change all of their clothes. These dolls are on plant shelves that are 12 feet up so it's great exercise going up and down the ladder getting each of these dolls. Then each of these dolls has an ornament that they hold so I have to mess with that.
All in all, it takes me about 2 weeks to decorate and I listen to and sing very off-key Christmas carols the entire time. I didn't do anything for Christmas last year because I found out I had cancer right before Thanksgiving and I just wasn't in the mood. So I'm really looking forward to it this year.
All decorations are taken down the day after Christmas. We always go on vacation in January and I want it done before we leave. Dolls stay in their Christmas outfits until beginning of February.
When the boys were little, they had their own Christmas tree, they took turns each year on which bedroom it went in. That way they could decorate themselves and leave "my tree" alone.
I have rightfully earned my derogatory nickname and comments. I can't understand why but DH and all 3 DS's just don't care much for the holiday.