Holiday Decor 2014

Somewhere between painting and cleaning and life, I wade some additions to our holiday display and finished getting it in place this weekend. I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea but I think it is a nice addition to the street. 

Christmas Decorations 2012

I finished putting up the lights out front this year. We have an addition to our yard. I am sure many folks will think it is tasteless but I think our plastic light-up nativity is fun. The dog, snowman and moose don't like that they aren't front and center anymore but there isn't much I can do about it. Next year I need to come up with a better way to plug everything in.

Deck the Halls

Trimming the Tree

 

We started to get in the holiday spirit at the Tiny Bungalow this week.  It began with our ritual trip to the Home Depot to pick out the tree.  I am not sure if I have mentioned it before but several years ago, I was in a hurry and pulled out a tree that hadn't been unwrapped yet.  I bought it sight-unseen and only was able to judge the height.  It ended up being the best tree we had gotten to that date.  Since then, I continue this ritual.  I have been pretty happy every year and this year is no exception.    

 I finished putting up the lights out front today.  We got a new critter for the front yard this year; a sitting dog.  Hint: if you want to get the attention of every school kid riding by on the local buses, wear a Santa hat while you decorate.  I got a lot of funny comments.  Some sort of mean but still pretty funny.

The entire street looks a bit more festive than usual this year and I have a feeling that folks will be adding on in a sort of "Griswold Competition" between now and the big day.  I think the dog is it for me.  Maybe next year, I'll spring for the pair of deer or maybe go crazy and stick something on the roof.        

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year to everyone from the Tiny Oak Park Bungalow.

Holiday Spirit at the Tiny Bungalow

I usually wait until after Thanksgiving to put up the holiday lights but this year, I couldn't wait.  The economy has been kind of sucking so things haven't been very fun.  I thought that by decorating early, I might be able to cheer myself and perhaps some other folks up in the process.

Each year I've tried to add on to the holiday light display at the house.  The first year, it was primarily lights, pine swags, and a small wreath.

Last year, I added a snow man to the display and kept a majority of the lights on the porch.

At the end of last year, when all of the holiday decorations were on sale, I let my daughter pick out this year's addition to the yard.  Now we have an animatronic light-up moose that is of the same construction as the show man.  I decided to throw some lights up on the trellises as well.  I may add more lights to the porch but this will be the display until after Thanksgiving.  It doesn't approach the Griswold's display but give me a few more years...

Getting in the Halloween Spirit

I used the last bit of particle board I had left over from my window shipping box. I made some headstones for the front yard. I suggest if anyone tries this activity at home that they exclude the involvement of anyone under the age of 10 in the project. My 5 year old, though interested in painting faux finishes to look like stone, wasn’t necessarily quick or proficient at it – though she insisted on doing as much of it as possible.

We’ve never decked the place out like we did this year. I think that it has been looking at all of those headstone and monument photos in preparation for my lecture and tour next week that got me in a weird mood.  Either way, hopefully folks will enjoy it. I have some purple lights to string around them as well but after hours of wrestling with the fake cobwebs, I figure I’ll tackle those tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

Wishing you a happy and safe holiday

from the Tiny Oak Park Bungalow

Its been a while

I do have a lame excuse for not posting in so long. I've been either entertaining visitors or incapacitated by a rib injury. Either way, I did get up enough energy to decorate the house this weekend - just in time for our first significant snow fall. One of these years, I want to create a traffic-stopping display out front. Unfortunately, this isn't the year. I think it looks pretty good none the less.

Happy New Year

Really, Christmas is next week?

This time of year always seems to fly by. We took time this week to decorate the Tiny Bungalow and celebrate the season with friends. This means that besides the cleaning and decorating, we didn't do much on the house. In fact, I didn't even do much in the decorating department so the traffic-stopping front porch diorama still eludes me. Only a little champagne and egg nog got spilled last night so the cleanup after the celebrating wasn't bad at all.

We have a long weekend for the holiday and for the first time ever, we won't be making the arduous journey to Syracuse to celebrate the Christmas with family. We hope to spend some time relaxing and maybe a little more time on the bedroom. It would be great to be sleeping in a completed room for New Years but I am not promising anything. We also got our first major snow last night and took our daughter sledding on the hill near our house. Having grown up in Upstate, NY, I wasn't complaining about the meager 6 inch "snowstorm" that we had but I did realize a funny thing - growing up in the Midwest, my daughter will probably never know how fun (or dangerous) sledding can get when you have some serious snow and hills that can take forever to climb. We enjoyed our day in the snow none the less.

Happy Holidays

Wishing Everyone
Happy and Healthy Holidays!

Deck the Halls

The wardrobe project ended up turning out O.K. after all. If I get up enough energy, I may do one more sanding and apply a coat of glossy poly on it but for now it works just fine. Since this project, I've spent the last couple of weekends cleaning up the yard (and cleaning off the front porch after the wardrobe project). I also put up the holiday lighting.

The yard work was easy. While we were away on vacation, a landscape service accidentally came to the wrong house. Either this happened or someone hired a service for us and we'll never know. We arrived home to a yard clean of all debris - our raspberries in the back were cut back and a lot of overgrown weeds were removed near our alley. This left me with only a few small chores - Nice. This is the first time I've been able to decorate a house. I wasn't too ambitious. In the middle of installing the lights, our first major snowstorm hit. This made the street look great but it slowed the decorating down a bit. I installed part of the lighting one weekend and part of it the next. Either way, it is done and the house looks fine.I think that next year I want to plan one of those elaborate traffic-stopping dioramas on the front porch. We'll see how much time I have at that point.