Christmas Decorating

I have decided to do my Christmas decorating in stages this year. Sunday afternoons tend to be family time. DH is busy at the moment trying to get our crops reapt but takes Sundays off so this time of year it's often only Sunday afternoons that we're all home together. So I thought that each Sunday afternoon we could do a small amount of decorating as part of our family time.

I like the idea of spreading out our Christmas decorating. It makes it only a small task to do each week so it's not overwhelming. It also spreads out the fun of Christmas. Plus it will help mark the coming of Christmas. The closer Christmas gets, the more "festive" the house will hopefully look. :-) I'm planning on a similar approach to the blog. Adding something each week to signal the gradual approach of Christmas (yeah, I know I added 2 things this week but I did miss last week lol).

Last week we put out our Santa. This week we've put out the nativity scene. It's a nice reminder to us of *why* we celebrate Christmas and not *too* dazzling when we're still a number of weeks away from the big event. :-)

I looked for years for a Nativity Scene that I liked and ended up finding this one in a fundraising toy catalogue from the kindy. We've had it for a couple of years now. The youngest 2 kids have already had fun playing with it before it was put on top of my china cabinet. No doubt it will get moved and played with a lot more yet. :-) I like the idea of having a nativity scene that doubles as both decoration and a toy.

While we're on the topic of Christmas. Yesterday, I actually began my Christmas gift wrapping. Every year I plan to start early and get as many gifts wrapped as possible before December. But usually it arrives before I've even started and I have to cram all the wrapping into those last few weeks when we're busy with end of year and Christmas celebrations as well as school holidays. We also have 3 family birthdays in December (DS plus both of DH's parents). Which reminds me, I have no idea what I'm going to get them for their birthdays. Eeek!

I think I have nearly all my Christmas shopping sorted now. Not that everything is actually bought yet but I at least have a plan in my head of what I'm going to do. That always makes me feel much better (to have an idea of what I'm giving people).

I finally put my Identity Direct order in. Not sure why I kept procrastinating on that but it's done now. My nephew is getting a personalised Cars book from us with our kids names in them as well. I'm pretty sure he'll love it - he LOVES his cousins and he's a big Lightning McQueen fan. He's also getting a set of dinosaur stompers ordered from a fundraising catalogue. I also found a cute musical set in their catalogue for my niece to go with the musical DVD I have for her. I was stoked to find they had quite a range of items on clearance as well so I've ordered a few stocking fillers from their clearance section. Oooh, I can't wait until it arrives. LOL. I'm particularly happy to have my nieces and nephews presents sorted as I'm the kind of auntie who really likes to get the "perfect" gift so I have a bit of a tendency to stress until I've found something I'm happy with.

Here's a link* if you want to have a look at what they have on sale:

Just scroll down their categories list (usually to the top left hand side of the page) to find the clearance stuff. They're offering free freight on orders over $65 until November 20th (which is only 2 days away so get in fast if you want to take advantage of that). Since I needed to order more name labels for the kids as well as my Christmas gifts it wasn't hard to spend over the $65 and it saved me $8.50 in freight so I was a happy camper (or should I say shopper?). :-)

How is everyone else going with their pre-Christmas preparations? You might notice I've added a "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" decoration in my sidebar. If you visit A Juggling Mum (link is under the picture) you can find links to other peoples posts about Christmas and can add your own links too if you like. I think she's posting the "Mr Linky" on a Thursday each week.

* This is an affiliate link which means if you click through it and buy something, the company give me a small percentage of the sale. I'm using affiliate links *when* I want to talk about a company (if they're available) NOT mentioning this company because they offer an affiliate link. Does that make sense? LOL. Like I said, I have just ordered through them myself. :-) If you prefer not to use the link that's fine too.