Christmas decorations

I love Christmastime, and I especially love Christmas decorations. But... I also have strong feelings about their timing -- anything before Thanksgiving is too early, and leaving them up more than a week into January is too long. That said, since I like the the decorations so much, I really hope they go up quickly after Thanksgiving!

And so it has become a tradition in our family that all of our decorations go up the Friday following Thanksgiving. Okay, I did spread the work out a bit this year since we did not host Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and Brandon & I put up the Christmas tree on the evening of Thanksgiving (but the window shades were left down until the next day, so it wasn't visible outside, and therefore didn't count!).

Now, we try for our outside decorations to be elegant and understated, using miniature white lights in our hedges and evergreens and in gentle arcs along our roof and fence (in contrast with the colored miniature lights visible on our Christmas tree), with many red bows and a couple of wreaths that make it pretty to look at in the daytime. That said, I've been puzzling for a while over how to express our love of Disney in our decorations without going too much over-the-top. (Though we enjoy the painted plywood characters at other homes, a plywood Mickey in a Santa suit has just never been our style.) I think I found a happy compromise, pictured above.

I've never been much of an arts-and-crafts guy, but this was actually pretty easy. I started with a simple 24" wreath from Hobby Lobby, and also purchased a 9' strand of garland that had identical greenery. I snipped the garland in half with wire cutters, and then twisted each of the two halves into a double circle for the ears -- the proportions worked out perfectly. I attached the ears to the wreath with cable ties, added the bow to match the rest of our decor, and it was done!

Of course Becky still rolls her eyes at me for doing this, but hey -- it could have been a lot worse. (Anyone know where I can buy a plywood Mickey in a Santa suit?)