This year we got smart about decorating for Christmas.
First, we got an artificial Christmas tree.
I feel like I should be sad that we didn't get a real one, but I'm not in the least.
Generally we put our tree up two weeks before Christmas and it's always super dry by Christmas Day--it doesn't help that we always forget to water it. I spend the first two weeks of December dreading having to decorate it and the next two weeks dreading the mess of taking it all down.
This year it was up and decorated while we were all still excited about it. Plus, I won't have to continually battle with Ben about keeping the lights on. To him, real trees are just piles of kindling waiting to go up in flames.
Second, we got all the ornaments laid out before we turned the kids loose.
It takes much longer to get an ornament out of it's box, than it does to hang it on the tree. With three eager kids, that leads to a grabby, arguing, stressful tree-trimming night.
Not fun!
It went much better when the kids were greeted with a sea of ornaments just waiting to be hung up.
On top of that we managed to use every single one of our ornaments.
I don't think that has ever happened. The boys' bedroom trees in their bedrooms are completely full of ornaments, but they are on display none-the-less!
The boys are still working on adding houses and trees to their Christmas Village--it's expanded enough to be moved to the hallway--but otherwise our Christmas decorating was done by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.
If I could just get my presents wrapped by the end of the weekend, which, by some miracle I have almost all of my list already bought and checked off, I think I may just have a low stress December!
