Yep - same as we do every year.
Live tree and everything!

I love Christmas decorations!

No tree here, and I really miss it, since my boy is a young teen and about to be over it all. I cannot find a way to keep the cat out of the tree, be it real or artifical. He pulls down the entire tree. And worse, he tears up my handmade ornaments. It's when he got into my son's room and knocked over the little tree my grandmother used when she could no longer decorate that ended all trees. It was the tree, with all crystal ornaments on it. It was high up on a shelf and the door stayed shut? Dang cat!

I do get away with lights on the windows, and so we settle for those. I miss my handmade ornaments. I used to participate in an ornament swap that was like a cookie swap and so I have enough for two or three trees. I could have an all angel tree, and all santa tree and one other.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, the autumn decorations come down and the pine and poinsettia wreath goes up though. I'm ready, but it's not time. Next week.

Not until 2 weeks before Christmas
Outdoor decorations on lawn, live tree in house week before, and change Kitchen and bath linens, with seasonal ones.

Thanks for the reminder! It's relatively warm here today, and I should put up my porch lights.

I remember how dismayed I was years ago when my retired parents decided to stop putting up a tree. They were in Florida, and I was in PA, but I hated to see the end of a tradition. Now I know exactly how they felt. I no longer have my old enthusiasm for Christmas decorating (and I especially lack enthusiasm for taking it all down afterward), but I have a 2-year-old grandson next door, so I'll do it for his sake.

Outside we have two small artificial trees on the steps coming up to the front door. Wreaths on all the windows and on the front door. Candles in the windows.
Inside we have a live tree. I decorate the mantle and that's it!
I might sprinkle a few things around the house, but not usually.
I try to talk my husband into getting a tree early. Sometimes when we wait, the pickings are slim and we don't get a tree that we like.

When the kids are here at Thanksgiving I'll ask them to help me put the tree together. I don't do a lot of outside decorating, just big red bows on the porch posts and yard lamp. I love my white tree with tons of white lights but my neighbor across the street loves it more. :-) She can't wait each year until I put it up. It does look pretty at night. Gotta get those windows cleaned!

We do a family get together the week before Christmas. I do put up a fakey tree, I have tons of small stuffed Boyd's bears I have collected, they go on the tree, with only small clear twinkle lights. then I put on my most favorite other ornaments. Last year I went through all of my ornaments and let my kids pick through them~~that way I did not feel so bad about getting rid of them.

I decorate a dresser I have in the entry way, a buffet and the dinning room table~~~2-3 things on fireplace mantle and something in my kitchen garden window and I am done.

It is a easy for me to manage putting up and 5year old DGD comes over after Christmas for a few days and helps me take it all down.

Ok I will confess my tree is up in the den. Not decorated . I love Christmas and we put it up early as hubby was down in the basement and decided to bring it upstairs about a week ago. We don't turn it on but it is standing proudly in the corner of the room. Its a new slimmer tree this year. Decorations are still in the basement.
Mary

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is gather greens, grass seed heads and berry branches from the woods and marshes to put in my outdoor pots around the front entrance and outside my kitchen windows. The arrangements stay nice well into the New Year. I also buy a few balsam wreath forms and decorate those for the front door and garden gate.

Indoors, we put up a live tree. We usually buy it just after Thanksgiving. We put big, old fashioned multicolored lights on it, and ornaments we have collected over the years along with many, many crocheted snowflakes that my late MIL made.

Last year I made a concerted effort to cull my Christmas decorations and I got rid of 2 big boxes of stuff. This year I'm going to cull more. I'm singing with the chorus about not spreading it all over the house and not wanting to have to put it all away again.

I like fall decorating more than Christmas. DH does almost all the Christmas decorating. Getting the boxes down is a huge job in itself. I'm tired of our decorations and the same-old same-old set-ups every year. But he loves doing it, so that's fine. One thing I plan this year is to set up the Dept. 56 village, which I haven't done in several years. We have grandchildren now, and they will enjoy it. (I have way too much Dept. 56 stuff.) Hope the 2-year old can control her little hands.

When other people enjoy the decorations (like Patti's neighbor), it's worth the effort.

Yep, I decorate every year. Christmas in the City and Dickens village vignettes in the living room, North Pole village in the family room.

Main tree in the living room, candy tree in the family room with the NP village, teddy bear tree in the cat room.

Lights up around the inside windows that face the street. No outside decorations except a wreath on the door.

I work full time, so it takes me about 3 weekends to get everything up. I have to pace myself LOL!

We also have a cat that will not stay out of a Christmas tree. Even if the ornaments are hung out of her reach, she will climb the tree to get to the "cat toys". I have a very nice candle/wreath thing that she is also interested in. One year I lit the candle, thinking she might avoid it because of the flame. She tiptoed over to the candle and cautiously started pulling at the wreath. So of course I blew out the candle and put that "toy" away. I do have a nice, Christmasy wreath that I hang on the wall out of her reach. So she spends time nearby staring at it - trying to figure out how to reach it, I assume.

This year I'm not doing any kind of decorations. We;ll be moving into our new log house around Christmas, if all goes well with our building schedule. We won't have time to do anything like that. Although I might hang the wreath up - it's too large to put in a box, so I might as well hang it on a wall once I have it moved.

I don't decorate till after Thanksgiving. I used to wait for a nice weekend in December. But I no longer decorate outdoors. Inside I have three things only- a Christmas tree, a wreath on the front door and a small manger set up on a table. I have a lot of decorations stored in my attic, from years gone by. I suppose I'll let my daughters take them when they get their own houses.

I really want a tree, as I haven't had one since I was a kid, but we have 5 cats now so I don't know if I want to deal with the frustration. :)

We have started decorating already. Although we have no children and we are seniors, I love the cheery atmosphere of lights both in and outside. We no longer do a large tree but we have table trees. DH loves his silver tree that he picked up at a garage sale for two bucks and it is decorated with blue balls. I have a fake green tree and this year I am quilling snowflakes for it. We are gradually culling our ornaments too. I do tend to keep my Christmas decorating up a long time before and after Christmas to help avoid the winter blahs.

I decorate everything. If it stands still, it gets decorated. DD is living through a remodel of her downstairs this next several months. They are living upstairs in the master bedroom, office and bathroom with their 4 year old and 6 year old. So she will spend their Christmas vacation here to give everyone a break. They live an hour away and because the oldest is in 1st grade, cannot come down here for the duration. They had hoped the project would happen during the summer when they could just come down here for their school break.

After Thanksgiving I intend to start decorating. It is a real chore and not something I can do quickly any longer. Too many aches and pains. But maybe I can get my son to help a little before he returns to New York after Thanksgiving.

I put up a small decorated and lit table top tree and I have a counter in the diningroom/kitchen that is a perfect place for my Dept 56 village. I also have one small lit up decoration for outside so that is what I do. My children are all grown and gone but my daughter and Grandchildren will come down after Christmas for a visit so it is nice to have the decorations.
Joann

I will put up my artificial tree over Thanksgiving weekend. I have 3 cats and a dog but my cats don't bother my tree. I have had cats and trees all my adult life. I used to put a nail in the wall and anchor the top of the tree with wire but I no longer do that. I bought my tree last year and it has lights on it. I always hated doing the lights. Dear little Finn will love my tree. If DS comes from CA for Christmas, I will have him help me take the tree down.

I do not like decorating for Xmas and we don't spend it here so what's the point. I always had the coolest Frazier fir but gave up live trees years ago when it took me hours to decorate it with the antique balls. I have small fake trees around, big balsam wreaths on all the outside doors. I have boxes of old balls in the attic and I'm guessing someone will throw them out some day. December 1st wreaths and pine roping go outside and are left up till March 1st. All inside decorations go down New years day.

I am not much into decorating, and to be honest, I envy those of you who really get into it and enjoy the effort put into all the fussing. It would be nice to see the house decorated from top to bottom, but I can't get myself motivated to do it.

I have been known to pronounce the house 'decorated' by getting from a top shelf in the kitchen cupboard the two Christmas themed coffee mugs and setting them out on the counter.

I will, as usual, about 3 days before Christmas have dh bring the 3 foot tree from the basement and set it in a window. That tree was decorated 15 years ago and is put away that way always on New Years Day.

Okay, you can call me scrooge.

I do the same decorations every year. A 3 foot lighted tree on a low table, near the living room windows, so it is seen inside and outside. I add a string of musical lights around the base, just to hear the family say "turn 'em off, turn 'em off." They do sound tacky.

On the buffet, which is on the other side of the living room. I put a brass ornament holder, on a tree skirt, for my really old ornaments, Around that I have an assortment of collected Christmas items that I "just had to have" over the years.

Outside I have two Alberta Spruce, one on each side of the porch entrance. These are hung with multi colored lights. On the front door is a (fake) holly wreath with a Christmas stocking, and a Santa.

That is it. None of it done until after Thanksgiving.

My GKs and GGKs are all past the Santa Clause age now.That sure takes away a lot of the fun!

Sue

We will not be here for Christmas day but we just got a new tree so it will go up in the atrium, I have 2 of the small 4' urn trees that go in the front windows, I have a new outdoor metal tree shaped thing that has lights on it which will be in the front yard. In the house all I do is put our various Santa's up on the mantle and have a small tree with red berries and lights on the fireplace hearth. Nothing in the rest of the house. Quick and easy.
Well I do have a little fiber optic tiny Christmas tree that plugs into the usb port of my computer and sits on top of my computers subwoofer. Hubby has one on his desk too.

We have a fiber optic 3 ft tree that I put on the table next to my chair....I also put up decorations in the livingroom, family room and kitchen....

We have kids so the decorations will get pulled out. My fall wreath is looking gimpy so I may go ahead and change that out now. The Christmas wreath looked good at my last house, but i think it needs to be dressed up for this one so I may do that first. My new neighbor and her daughter are into crafting and so are my daughter and I. I may try to come up with some cute Christmas ornament ideas for the girls.

I am like sheilajoyce if it stays still long enough it gets decorated!! I have tons of Christmas stuff for the inside and outside too. Going to have to buy some of those net lights for the shrubbery outside though...We will start the day after Thanksgiving & II will have it all done by my birthday which is December 5th.

Yes~~ I was asked to be on the Christmas Homes Tour, so I am trying to get my thoughts and things together. The tour is Dec. 14th and I hope to get my DDs to come help me. I did not think I would do this again and when I moved down here, I sold/gave away almost all of my decorations...so I am borrowing a lot of the decorations this year because I won't be doing this ever again :-)

I'll take down my fall decorations (and start playing Christmas music) the day after Thanksgiving. I'll start decorating for Christmas as soon as I get everything "fallish" put away, probably by Friday evening.

I always do but am thinking about not putting up the tree this year. We'll see.

I will be putting a wreath on each outside door and a few other floral items inside. We had 2 nice large artificial trees in our attic. Each year we put up one of them. My husband always did the lights. Now that he is gone I donated both of them to a thrift store and bought a 4.5 ft tree with lights on it. I am going to only use smaller type ornaments on it.
I also want to get the decorations out of the attic, pick out what I want to keep and then have the children see if there are any things they want. The rest will be donated.

The men in our one block neighborhood have taken to doing lights around each house and on wires across the street. I hate the blinking they have decided to do with the lights--a machine blinks the lights to the beat of the music that they play over loud speakers. It is so much prettier with the lights on all the time as opposed to when they go off. This year they are avoiding renting a cherry picker type of truck and have been working on installing the lights the past 3 weekends. The community contest is judged in early December and thus the early work.

It certainly is festive along our block after dark. Our little grandsons love it.

I can't wait...y'all have me soo excited and my little Riley Bear will be sooo awestruck...I'll put the wreaths on the windows sometime next week and start decorating maybe before Turkey Day...who knows!!

I don't do any outdoor decorating except for putting a holiday wreath on the front door. I'll do that on 12/1. However, I plan to start decorating indoors on Tuesday, 11/26. My house guests are leaving on Sunday, 11/24, so I'll use Monday to wash and iron the linens they used and get my house put back in order.

We won't have guests for Thanksgiving, but will have our first holiday party on 12/3, so I need to have the inside decorated by then. I've decided the Dept. 56 village will stay in storage this year. I'll be lucky to get the mantel and a few other areas decorated. This year's late Thanksgiving is messing up my schedule...LOL!

Those of us with cats and Christmas trees might get a kick out of this blog which documented the state of their tree day by day as the cats "helped" with it. This cracks me up everytime I view it.

But seriously, when they were younger, the cats climbed up the tree. They don't bother with it much now, but we still have 4 tree survival rules in our house:

1). Anchor the tree to the ceiling with a hook and fishing line.
2). Don't decorate the lowest branches as they can be viewed as dangling cat toys, and are apt to be found in any part of the house.
3). Store away the glass ornaments. Go with resin, sequin, beaded, fabric - anything that won't break.
4). Watch the tinsel, ribbon, string etc. If swallowed, these can cause intestinal obstruction costing big $$$ to surgically fix, not to mention save their life.

And above all, enjoy your tree! (after it's cat proofed)

Here is a link that might be useful: Iris and Fern Decorate the Tree!

I don't do much. Outside I have an led-light star that I mounted on the front of the house last week. Our house is cedar-shingled so it shows up well. Today I ordered one of those silouette manger scenes that you set in the yard and shine a light on. It's supposed to be 5 feet long by about 4 feet high. It should be here this week.

I don't go for the Santa-snowman-reindeer decorations much. Inside I have a big fake tree that oldest son and his wife will put up and decorate for me. White lights with white and gold decorations only.

I do, but my husband is not a Christmas guy..so for him..I keep it simple and not to obtrusive.

I also put it up/out ..bit by bit..

We have 3 cats and only 2 mess with the trees.l have bought lots of little jingle bell ornaments that we hang on the bottom of the trees, so when we hear the "jingle" we all know to yell "scat get away from the tree" But once I get all the presents under the tree they really can 't get near the tree. My Aunt LOVES LOVES to wrap Christmas presents, so she is coming down on December 2, to wrap presents for me in the AM, her GD, Molly, my Aunt & myself have planned on doing some Christmas cooking that day. We will "lose" my Aunt around 3pm so she can get home before dark. So my cousin, Molly, I will finish up the goodies..We may do more cooking on December 9th too. Just depends on how much we get done on the 2nd. We will have Christmas music playing in the background, so I think my kitchen will see some dancing around while we cook...lol I LOVE being back "home"!!!!!

This year I plan to keep it simple. Tree in the living room and the new Willow Tree nativity that mom bought us last year. We are out in the country, not much traffic so this year there will be a wreath on the front door and we are purchasing two holiday projectors, one for the house and one for the garage. That will be the extent of it.
We have 8 cats and in the past have had as many as 14. We've never had a problem with the tree but we also use a rotating tree stand. When the tree is in motion there's no problems. When it's stopped some of them might swing at the long dangling ornaments at the bottom. I keep those shatterproof and if one comes off, no biggy.

Y'all are lucky. And it has to be luck. Because I have been around cats my whole life. I know how to communicate their way. I bring cats out of their shells and restore their confidence. Oh, how I wish I could have my tree.

I have even tried to tied each and every ornament to the branches! Nope. This one cat is determined to bring it all down however he can. He is the most obstinate cat I have ever known. I love cats. But this one, is fully incorrigible. Nothing stops him. Nothing. Not negative, not positive, nothing. heavy sigh. I've never had a cat I wasn't head over heels about. Him, not so much. heavy heavy sigh. The sad thing is, he's trainable. He comes when you call him, sits when you tell him, begs when you tell him. But to tell him not to do something, it aint happening. What is the positive way to say stay out of the tree? Go sit there for the rest of night, even when I am asleep? :(

I talked myself into not putting lights around my very large balcony this year, a lot of work hanging them alone since my husband passed, I thought maybe some had burned out anyway, but upon checking them they all twinkled at me, and here I go again. Will be nice when great grands come to watch the Santa Claus parade that goes by my street.Old habits die hard. Merry Christmas everybody.

Every year I swear I am not putting up a tree, but then I do. It seems pointless as I am lucky to have even three people see it. I do put up pine roping and lights on my fence and a wreath on the door. More people see the outside than the inside! I live in a close-knit neighborhood and I think people enjoy seeing the decorations, although not everyone celebrates Christmas.

I do less indoors each year. I used to have a big family but now they are spread out and have families of their own, plus a few lost through death and divorce. My rotten sons (kidding) have not married or produced grandchildren. Christmas is for kids.

We will start sometime in Dec. Whenever I can get someone to bring up the tree. It's HUGE. At least here. If I had a 12' ceiling, not so huge, but it's 29 years old, and I can't replace it with the same type of tree. I love the way it goes together. Put the ring on the post, post in stand, and start hanging the branches. Yes, hang. No sticks to poke in holes on the post. It's supposed to be 7' tall, but we have to bend the top down a little for our 8' ceiling to put the angel on. It will not fit in a corner. I think I've posted pictures of it in the past.

Sometimes I put up a village, sometimes not. The Nativity always goes up.

DH and maybe DS will put lights up outside.

I seldom do any decorating in the rest of the house.

Dedtired, I have to disagree. Christmas is for everyone! Yes, the usual hoopla is mainly for the kids, but the Spirit of Christmas is for all.

I find a lit tree, and maybe a fire, is extremely peaceful to sit and watch with the other lights turned off.

Tami

I do quite a bit of decorating. We have a big tree (12 ft) in the living room, a standard tree on the back porch, and pencil trees in the upstairs bedroom and our bedroom. I decorate my mantel, my dining room chandelier, put a centerpiece on the table & decorate the sideboard. We have wreaths on the outside doors & small ones on the windows with candles. We've been lucky with our cats so far; none of them have ever climbed the trees or really messed with them. Magic likes to lie under them, but that's it. I love the Christmas season!