{She Said} Christmas Decoration Rules

I’ve said it before, I will say it again, I love seasonal decorations. Over my 4.5 year marriage, I have accumulated 9 tubs of Christmas decorations. Yep, those big ones. And, though the accumulation has petered off, every year we find at least one addition to it.

Now, by the sheer mass, you wouldn’t believe it, but I am actually really picky about Christmas décor. I need to preface the following with this: I am not particularly picky about other people’s decoration choices. When I see something I would never choose at someone else’s house I think it is perfectly lovely. It just isn’t for me and I feel pretty strongly about it in my house but don’t think ANYTHING of it in someone else’s.

So, that being said, here are a select few of my Christmas decoration rules…

• Outside décor. In a place like Texas, it should not include snowmen, penguins, or icicle lights. That doesn’t make any sense. It is generally not cold enough for any of those things here and there is something taken away from the whimsy when you have a snowman sitting on a brown lawn.
• Christmas tree lights. Need to be in true colors: red, yellow, orange, blue, and green are my preferred light colors. I choose to put two completely different sets of lights on our tree- one white set that stays lit constantly lit and one colored (non-LED) set that dances. I do not like LED lights. I don’t like the colors of them, they seem to generally have a strobe effect, and they just generally aren’t as pretty to me.
• Ornaments. Ornaments go on my tree in stages. In my head, there are 4 visual stages to my tree: lights, garland, base ornaments, personal ornaments. The stages go on in that order. Because the lights, garland, and base ornaments are all generally to enhance the personal ornaments they are to serve as a backdrop and thus go on first.
• Porcelain. I generally don’t like porcelain figurines as they either look like they are trying to look real but failing or they look so real that it looks like a tiny being is sitting on my tree, mantle, or elsewhere.
• Words. I like to decorate with words. I don’t know why… little reminders I guess.