My Christmas House Tour (cough, cough)!

I was reading a randomly-found blog this morning of a woman offering a photo-tour of her house all dressed up for Christmas.
It was amazing.
And depressing.
Perfectly primped porches and immaculate living-rooms with colour-coordinating sofa cushions scattered on the white three-seater and a magnificent Christmas tree dominating the rooms with it's glittering, glowing, and very expensive-looking decorations and lights.

Sigh.

So I thought you might like to come on a house-tour of my house all decked out…. almost… not quite there yet…. for the Christmas season.

See that picture above…. that's what my front door should look like….

…if we could find the box where the wreath is stored.

That's the trouble with living in rental houses and half your stuff is still in storage.

Welcome to my house. Look at my pretty porch and front door. I spent so much time on it.

Well, it looked good last week when we had the birthday party. Must get around to taking down the birthday balloons sometime.

It has been a busy week this week. The last week of the school year for my three oldest children. Lots of prize-givings and concerts and desk clean-outs and friend and teacher goodbyes.

One of these days we'll get around to putting away the schoolbags and find something to do with the old school books.

But look at this amazing Advent Calendar Miss M made this term in Textile Class.

And I did manage to purchase new candles for the Christmas table centrepiece. Just have to find the right box now for the Christmas picks and greenery to decorate it with.

And because it's been so busy, I really haven't had time for laundry.

Plus, it's way to hot to iron!

And in this heat, trying to get a little boy to tidy up his bedroom is next to impossible.

Miss A and I had a lot of fun this week decorating the Christmas tree. We had to do it in instalments, in between concerts and kindy, but we got it finished yesterday and we love it. We went for a red and silver theme this year. Some years we just throw everything on, and some years we try and coordinate it. Usually Miss M decides what we're going to do. I like the red and silver.

And we had fun discovering all the old and loved ornaments.

And these precious ornaments that were a wedding present from my bridesmaid Paula who flew out from the USA 16 years ago. I love these!

In my Christchurch house, I had a fireplace mantel that I used to lay out the Christmas village.
This year, in the rental house, there's no fireplace, so I decided to use the piano. Here's is what I have found so far….

And here is where I found two of the Christmas village houses….. I wonder how they got here?

Christmas lights waiting to be untangled….

Christmas DVD's waiting to be watched...

Boxes to be sorted through….

It's a fun time of the year, but for us Down-Under-ites, it's always a busy and hot time of the year.
I have done some pretty elaborate Christmasses in the past, but the more children I have had, and the busier that their lives have become it gets harder to keep the house tidy and decorate and bake and do all those yummy and fun Christmas things. So we make our traditions and we enjoy the build up and we have fun and we find that in spite of the chaos and sometimes frenetic activity in a busy household, we find the time to enjoy the season.

And I'm pretty happy with our Christmas tree this year. It might be the only thing in the house that's finished (although don't look at the back where there are hardly any decorations, or the crammed decorations on the lower branches on the side which is the only place Miss A could reach), but we love it, and when the sun finally goes down at about 9pm each night, we love turning on the lights and feeling the Christmas atmosphere.

How are you going with your Christmas plans and decorating? Or do you not do it at all? How far do you go with decorating the house?