Christmas Village

I love having my own house to decorate the way I want :) Ok,it's not really my house but really, I run things around here. Since Abram's not here and Grandpa doesn't have much energy to decorate, I get to do it! And that's totally fine by me because I love doing it. :) I'm trying to make my living room look good so I took out the summer fans sitting underneath the piano and am going to move the stacks of records sitting under the other piano to another room and will get most of the books and magazines out of there temporarily.

Last night I finally (after 3 and a half months, oops) finished getting all the contents of the kitchen put back away after the remodel it had. Those contents were sitting on the table in the formal dining room, which is directly adjacent to the living room (and looks like a part of that room). I had better plans for that table for the next 6-7 weeks.

My grandmother passed away over 8 years ago and she loved decorating her house for the holidays but in the last 2-3 years of her life had a lot of trouble doing it herself. So her granddaughters (my sister and I) would come to help. I kept up with her traditions the first 4 years or so after she passed away but the last 4 years or so have not been so good. In addition to the Christmas Tree, the other main attraction in the house was the Christmas village. For years she collected items for this village and ended up with 12 buildings and plenty of figurines, trees, and other accessories to make the most adorable village. I always enjoyed setting the village up but the last few years it just hasn't happened. So I decided to put it up this year!

For years the village was set up on top of an old, large stereo (which consequently, the aforementioned records were inside of). Abram and I talked Grandpa into getting rid of the stereo, which doesn't work well and I have never seen him use, when we moved in. So I needed somewhere new to put the village. Enter the formal dining room table! So I spent 2 and a half hours setting it up tonight and it looks beautiful! The next phase of decorating won't happen until next Friday so I will enjoy just this one for now.

Here is a picture of it tonight. The lights were off in the room but the flash gets rid of that effect. I wanted to take a picture from the long side, too, but the camera battery died just then! So this is it for now. Hopefully the picture does it justice!