'Tis The Season

This year it took all day Friday, most of Saturday and some of Sunday to get the house decorated for Christmas. So much work, and oh, so worth it!

First things first, our Christmas tree. We've had an artificial tree for the past 3 years, and it has been wonderful. It's not that I don't like real trees, they just don't like me. My allergies would act up so bad around Christmas time, and finally I realized the problem was the tree. We got this one at JC Penney one Black Friday, the price was reduced from over $300 to $119, and it has paid for itself. It's prelit, which I'm very thankful for. It used to take a couple of hours just to get all the lights on the tree, then go back and make sure there were no spots that weren't lit, and by the time it was done I didn't want to see the tree anymore! Now it takes 10 minutes to get it up and lit. My daughter puts the decorations on; all I do is add the ribbon and the angel. We positively love our tree!

For 10 years I sold Christmas decorations through party plans, first with House of Lloyd (Christmas Around the World) and later with Kingdom Treasures. I was able to amass a very large amount of decorations, which I like to set up by collection.

This first is the Freezeman Family. Actually, the littlest one isn't part of the original Freezeman's, but we needed an extra so that it would represent our family. They're all decked out for skiing, but they stay indoors thanks to South Florida never getting any snow!


I love Christmas villages. This is part of the village that is in the living room. It goes around the corner and has houses, bridges, a lake, lighthouse, and about 5 churches.

The village in the dining room is my favorite. It's all gingerbread houses and snowmen. We call this Christmas in Orlando because it reminds me of a theme park!

Another collection: The Lloyds. House of Lloyd did this family over a period of several years, first releasing Floyd and Flossie. When these became popular, House of Lloyd came out with Grandma Flo, Grandpa Lloyd, and finally the kids, Hip and Hop. I purchased the chairs at Big Lots. The heads are porcelain, while the bodies are mostly fabric, though there's some porcelain on the bottom to help them sit up. Everyone who comes into my home falls in love with this family of Christmas rabbits.

Mind you, this is just a sampling of all the decorations in our home. Amazingly, I paid very little for all these pieces. Since I was a hostess and later a demonstrator for the company, I was able to get these pieces free. All I paid was tax and shipping. It was an easy and inexpensive way to decorate my home. Not only that, I helped decorate the homes of several family members - these pieces made excellent gifts! I miss those days, but sadly with mass retailers like Wal-mart it's very difficult to do these types of parties anymore. Still, I enjoyed it while I could, and now I have a beautiful home and lovely heirlooms for generations to come.

I'll be posting more pics later on, so stay tuned!