The Traveling Steve's

It’b beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . . .

Yes, I know it’s a bit early for Christmas decorating, (i.e. a week before Thanksgiving), although not judging by the shopping malls and stores all decked out.  As we are normally only home on weekends, we have to maximize our ‘house’ time.  I’ve been quite busy since my last post, but as I worked at home this week and had the weekends free with DOS was able to get the inside of the house decorated at least, leaving a few short weekends in December to enjoy it.

We started by making a mess by getting the decorations out of the ‘closet’ (which was once a spare bedroom.)  (Living in Florida we don’t have basements, so a 4 bedroom home quickly becomes a 3 bedroom home over the years!)img_3014

We had the pool deck professionally pressure-washed on Saturday morning, so we waited until afternoon to start putting lights up out there.  img_3004Meanwhile DOS and I went thru the garage to get extra power cords, lights, and our 12′ artificial Christmas tree, which was de-assembled in four parts.  Never easy to carry, we managed to get it inside the house and put back together.

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In the afternoon I went to our ‘apartment’, i.e. storage bin to retrieve some of the Christmas lights and decorations we have stored there – oh those pesky Florida homes with no basements or adequate storage space!

img_3062img_3027 I filled my Izusu SUV with several storage bins and other decorations, and headed back home to set them up.img_3028

Unlike some years where we take everything down; i.e. picture frames, souvenir setups etc, we decided to do a ‘Christmas around the World theme’, which allowed us to theme the different setups we have without redoing everything in the process. While we did replace several of the wall hangings with ‘light-up’ Christmas art, img_3074we left some of the large and favorite photos/tapestries  in place.

On one wall, we have a Vietnam and Cambodia Christmas.  (Although to be technically accurate as we were there in February for the Chinese New Year, we would have to add an orange tree which we saw hundreds of being transported on the scooters around town.)

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img_3075For Italy, we added a small Christmas village, while leaving our Venice masks up, staring out at passers-by.

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For the city of lights, we lit up our Eiffel Tower setup and artwork with white lights, appropriately for this vibrant city.

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For South America, I setup the Peanuts gang on a colorful turntable we had bought in Cartagena  – no snow there as it’s summer time in the southern hemisphere.

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We left undecorated, but we kept our wool tapestry from Peru hanging on the wall as well.

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Our snowman village is musical with dancing fountains,

while another snowman is animated with a Christmas train.   

Our Hallmark snowman orchestra is also ready for another Christmas season of lights and music.

Of course living in Orlando, we have a Disney section, so here is the Disney wreath we made, and added a couple of our friends, Pooh, Eeyore, and my favorite Goofy!img_3044

We have this Disney setup below year-round in our kitchen, however we customize it for Christmas with lights and Christmas Disney characters.  The monorail above actually works, and we built a track around the kitchen so it can make a complete circle. (Oops, I forgot to take the tiny pumpkin down from Halloween off the top of the Contemporary Resort!)

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Our Napa Valley setup includes grape lights and canvas posters of our travels there.

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img_3035-1While our Hawaiian setup includes our Disney pals with an ice skating ring – as you know you can’t image Hawaii without ice skating! LOL!

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And miscellaneous but festive, we have our Welcome doorman snowmen, and Christmas poinsettias.

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Christmas decorating is all in good fun, and of course we can’t leave out the most important reason for the season of all – the Nativity setup under the tree.  He is the reason for the season – indeed!

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Now we have most of the inside of the house decorated, we next move on to the outside pool area and front yard.  To be continued . . .

 

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