This is how we Christmas: Decoration Tradition

It's Thursday, so it must be This is how we Christmas Day, over at Preachers Wife. Last week we talked about Christmas Traditions, this week we are on our Decoration Traditions and next Thursday - well you will just have to come back and see.

I love decorating the house for Christmas, and as we are fortunate to have a large house, there is lots of room for decorations. I also like to buy a couple of new decorations (at least!) every year. This year I bought these two cheeky little birds - not decided where to put them yet though.

It's difficult to know what decorations to include but here are some of the main ones:

1. The Tree:
When we moved here, almost ten years ago, the living room is large so we decided to buy a large Christmas tree. I prefer artificial trees as I can't be bothered with the mess etc of real ones, so we have always had an artificial one. Our tree will not go up until this weekend, so this photo was taken two years ago (I think), but this years will look very similar. There are a couple of hand-made decorations hanging on it and a couple of decorations we bought when on holiday in Austria one year.

2. Children's favourites: the boys have a couple of favourite things that they really love, even though this is perhaps not shared by everyone in the family! One of them, I don't have a picture of (I wonder why?) is of a Santa run - a bit like a helter skelter with about 4 little santa figures on sledges which go round and round with an annoying little tune. The other is this fellow

when you press his hand he jumps up and down and sing "lets all jump for Christmas!"

3. I don't really do flower arranging as such, but do like to do several dried flower arrangements at Christmas, mainly done in baskets. I can't find any photos though from previous years and this years are not done yet. Note to self - must take more photos!!!

So that's our Decoration Traditions - whats yours?