Our Christmas decorating has begun

VinceL

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We have landscape lights all along the sidewalk from our driveway to our front door. I change the bulbs in them for various holiday seasons. In early October the white bulbs were replaced with orange and purple bulbs. This past weekend, the orange and purple bulbs were replaced with red, green and white bulbs.

We put many decorations, including inflatables, in our front yard. To keep people from walking across the yard and possibly injuring themselves, we put a "fence" of poles made of PVC pipe. For Halloween, these poles are orange and black and we string lights between them. Here's a picture:
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For Christmas, the poles are red, green and white. I just put those up on Sunday, but I haven't had a chance to take any pictures.

Today, we started bringing totes from the garage into the house. We put up 4 trees on the main floor and 3 trees on the lower level. Here are some pictures of the main floor today:
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Here's what the downstairs looks like:
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And, checking things out downstairs is Clyde.

Our cats seem to love Christmas. They climb and sleep on the totes. They love the shag rugs we put under the trees that are on hardwood floors. And, they just love to curl up under the trees and snooze.

This year is the first time we put up a Halloween tree. Here's a picture of the tree (before any lights or ornaments) with Loki and Clyde under it and Bonnie next to it:
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MoochNNoodles

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Nice! I'm a little jealous you have room for so many trees!! I guess technically we put up 3 because my kids each have a small one for their bedrooms. But I only have room for one big tree right now. Maybe when my kids are older and we don't have toys around the house.
 

rgwanner

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I love the old sewing machine! I love the lights. Your place must be beautiful when it is all done. I only have a small outdoor space since I have a condo, but I put up lighted candy canes along the flower beds, and 3 light up cats. also net lights on the bushes and lights around the door. Inside I don't do as much because the cats knock everything down.
 

NY cat man

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We don't put up a tree, because with our 6 cats, it would be a disaster in the making. We used to put up those color-changing icicle lights, but Michele doesn't like the idea of me being up on a ladder at my age, so this year she just wants to put one of those garlands with red bows on our porch railing, along with a caroler group that we got several years ago.
 
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VinceL

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Below are pictures of our trees from last Christmas:

Our small tree (you can see Lexi under the table)
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Here is the Peanuts/Disney tree in the front foyer:
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Here is the Star Trek tree (next to the Peanuts/Disney tree):
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Here is our big 9 foot tree in the living room (our first home to have higher than 8 foot ceilings):
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This tree has a mix of Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and a couple of other Hallmark ornaments series:
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Here is the tree most relevant to this forum...our cat tree. Every ornament on this tree features a cat. Sorry for the Grumpy Cat tree topper being turned around. This is one of our 3 trees that are mounted on revolving tree stands. I took this picture at the wrong time.
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And finally, our Star Wars tree:
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You probably noticed that several of the trees have popcorn on them. That is real popcorn. My wife pops a bunch of popcorn and strings it in late summer. After Christmas, we put the popcorn outside for the birds to feast on.
 

di and bob

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Since we are remodeling an old farmhouse and packing at times to move there this spring, I'm not decorating at all, the first time in 41 years! I can't stay home to get totes, unpack, pack up the stuff it is replacing, when I am out at the other place all day. My cats love all the new stuff and totes to explore too. Since I got Yammy through his 'crisis' period with his leukemia, I now have hope he will be with us for Christmas, the only gift I wanted.......
 

rubysmama

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I love all the pictures! Have fun with this year's decorating! 🎄
 
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VinceL

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We went away for a week around Thanksgiving to visit our daughter who is in Vet School at Iowa State. It was a 2,200 mile round-trip.

So, my Christmas decorating is running a bit behind schedule. I work on the outside decorations during daylight and work on inside decorations in the evening.

Our 7 trees are up and all have their tree toppers. 5 of the trees have lights and are ready for ornaments. I should get the lights on the other 2 tomorrow evening.

Here's our little 3 foot tree:
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Here's our main tree...ready for ornaments:
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The Peanuts/Disney tree is on the left and the Star Trek tree is on the right. Both are ready for ornaments.
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We have about 20 cat toys that are Christmas-themed. After Christmas, we pack them up. The other day I found the bag of toys and dumped them on the living room floor. Got lots of kitty cat attention. Bonnie curled up among them and just snoozed for a few hours.

Tonight will be the first night where I can control a few outside lights from my computer. And, this afternoon, I programmed our outdoor Snoopy Christmas countdown clock. That will get set up in the front yard tomorrow.

I think I'm going to be putting up decorations right up until Christmas eve. :santa: Maybe Santa will be able to give me a hand with the last few decorations.
 

MoochNNoodles

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Oh boy! But what fun till it’s time to take it all down! :lol: DH begrudgingly told me a section of lights is out over the garage. The section a storm blew down so we already rehung once...:cringe:
 

Sylvia Jones

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Absolutely Beautiful! But how in the world do you keep the cats off the trees? We put up our fresh cut tree last weekend and have already had to move all the ornaments to the top half because Whisper and X/Ray knock them down. Again and again and again
 

rubysmama

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I love the idea of theme trees. Mine is just a mishmash of all the ornaments I've collected over the years. Not bad. But not a theme. Maybe I should get a small tree and do a cat one for Ruby.🎄 :winkcat:
 
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VinceL

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The outdoor decorating is complete, and I took some photos and videos tonight. The video files are huge (over 100 Mb) so I don't think I'll be uploading them.

Here are some pics:

You can't tell from a photo, but there are penguins having a snowball fight. I have a series of balls of lights which sequence across an arch to simulate the snowballs going back and forth.
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The ninth Star Wars movie comes out this week. We put our Star Wars inflatables out every year that there is a Star Wars movie being released in December. I don't know if there will be any more Star Wars movies. :(
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Our Christmas countdown clock. We have had this for many years. Last year we actually hired someone to repaint it because the paint was chipping so much.
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The reason for the season
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We have Christmas video projections in our 2 front windows. The projector for the window on the right is connected to an FM transmitter. A message is displayed every few minutes telling people to tune their car radios to hear what Santa is talking about.
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And finally, the most relevant picture for this forum! I found this sign

in a catalog we received in the mail a couple of years ago. As you can see the sign has 2 orange cats, a grey cat and a black-and-white cat....exactly the mix of our cats. You can see the sign in the previous picture just to the left of the sidewalk.
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I will try to see if I can compress some of the video files.
 

rubysmama

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Everything looks great! I bet there's a steady stream of traffic past your house during the holidays. 🎄
 
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