No boughs of holly, but still...

I don’t know about you, but my halls are all sorts of decked. The Roomie and I don’t have an enormous amount of space to work with, but we make it festive. Well, technically, I do the decorating whilst Roomie fulfils her holiday tradition of napping on the couch in red sweatpants and a Santa hat. But, regardless, we both play our roles and the apartment gets its seasonal makeover.

It would be really difficult for me to pick a favorite decoration, but for the sake of my efforts here, I’m going to discuss the Department 56 houses. While every decoration reminds me of a story, the houses are the only ones that can be set up to tell one on their own.

I grew up setting these houses up. My mom collected them and I liked to sit and watch their little lights twinkle and myself stories about where in the village or city I would live (the yellow house that generally sat atop the kitchen cabinets) and where I would work (the movie theater that constantly showed White Christmas). At least this is what I thought about when I wasn’t being tortured by questions of why the people were doomed to grow to such heights that they could never fit into the doors of the buildings where they lived.

Even crouched over, Gramps here is about a story tall.

Over the years I started collecting them as well, sometimes receiving them as gifts, sometimes taking them from my mother’s horde under the dark of night.

Whoops, guess the cat’s out of the bag. 

(Tangent: Why are we carrying cats around in bags in the first place? 

Seems like a great way to get scratched.)

Our apartment is not quite large enough for me to showcase all of my houses every year and for whatever reason, the Roomie will not agree to sleeping in her closet for the month of December so I can transform her bedroom into a showroom. She’s selfish that way.

Still, I manage to do some sort of display whenever the holidays roll around. It takes me hours to get it all together and decide not only where the buildings are situated this year, but also how all the city folks are going to be interacting.

She’s covering her mouth to hide a smile. He totally said he was going to come courting and never did. 

Serves him right to get jumped on by a wet dog. Even if that middle-of-the-face beard is hard to resist.

And then I’ve got the folks who are new to town. This gentleman, for instance, only found his way to my city this year.

He goes by Melvin and is my soul mate: 

Carrying way too many books and kind of blurry. 

What more can a girl ask for?

How about you? Any holiday decorations that you look forward to every year?