Sharon, GW has a wonderful Christmas and Holiday forum. The people there are full of great ideas. Come on over and play! Here's the link. Here is a link that might be useful: Christmas and Holiday Forum

Very lovely! I have a question, where and how do you store all of your decorations the rest of the year? Garage? Shed? Rental unit? I decorate fairly extensively inside our home for Christmas, but nothing outside really, and my storage boxes have pretty much taken over our large garage storage closet. So much so, my DH is threatening to "lose some". But, anyhoo, my major Christmas decorating starts today, so thank you for your inspirational jumpstart.

We often do outside early i.e. before Thanksgiving, mostly to beat the weather. I have hosted many a Thanksgiving where outside was Christmas and inside was full on fall/Thanksgiving. For a reason like a party I would not hesitate to begin early. I am a ASAP after Thanksgiving, Christmas is donned person! It's worth a month of prepping and celebrating!! "Jesus is the Reason for the Season", after all. It used to take me a full 15 hour day to get things all set and mostly cleaned up. When I had little ones underfoot I didn't want the mess or certain things left where they could be broken etc. Now I will take the weekend or longer. Back in the day, my time at my home was sooo short as I would return from my parents after Thanksgiving and it was only a few weeks until Christmas break from school. I wanted my tree up NOW --and I guess it stuck. LOL I did STOP dead in my tracks Monday when I was in a big box store and thought I saw real poinsettia's--turns out they were mums wrapped up....

The general store picture is 29 in wide by 9 in high . I would put in on the stairwell wall and I would have 38 in wide by 9 feet tall. So it would fill the width but I am looking for decor ideas to put above or below. The tree Pic is 28 wide by 9 high I would put it on the entertainment center wall with 5 feet wide by 9 feet tall to drcorate.