Show & Tell -- NieNie Asks: When (and How) Do You Holiday Decorate?

Hi al!! I love,love,love Christmas!! Growing up my Mother let me take the lead,and do most of the house decorating.It takes everything in me to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to start the decorating in my home.Although,that does not stop me from preparing items that I will need and use once the hour strikes!!From now until then, I will make new wreaths,page through new magazines and books,decide what I will display where,pick up candies and other items for my displays,and so on.The day after Thanksgiving..the music starts early,the candles and scents start warming,the box lids fly off...and I play all day!!By evening the dust settles and the house has been transformed too my Christmas wonderland. It is worth the wait,and the build up brings me back too the good old days of home and of my youth.My best to all this season,I pray for peace in our wonderful country.Liza Jayne

Sept 9---My Sweet Husband put up leafs all over everything as soon as the first leaf turns yellow :) He does a beautiful job, this year I came home from spending the weekend with my sister and my little home was all decorated... Oct 1 ---We don't have a lot of halloween decorations (3 years married) but I get my crikit out and cut little things too put in the windows. This year me and my baby boy took lots of pictures and made them spooky and hung them up everywhere. As soon as halloween is over we will make little hand turkeys and hang them up, but Christmas will we everywhere else. We have the chance to live in the middle of no where so we get too cut down our own Christmas tree so the tree has too wait until after Thanksgiving (a family thing of going and picking out the perfect tree and then the fun of cutting it down and dragging it down the mt) Right after January 5th I put hearts all over and hide them so when you open up something where ever there is a heart thats says I love you or be mine. After Valentines it back too normal :)
Sorry for the story Thanks for reading tho :)

My home is decorated for the Fall. Not too much Halloween stuff, but I do have my home feeling like Autumn. I love it!!!!

In our house my hubby take care of Halloween, and I do Christmas. But we're pretty much in agreement 10/1 for Halloween and day after Thxgiving for Christmas.

Another thing is we're very selective about how we decorate - my hubby loves anything that reminds him of Halloween from when he was a boy - so we have lots of his mom's old decor and he looks online for anything that reminds him of his childhood.

I am very particular about how to decorate for Christmas. I try to steer clear of the commercial decorations and keep only things that can be representative of the Savior (no Santa's no snowmnen, no "cutesy" stuff) all more elegant and symbolic (just like my mom - interestingly enough). Helps me keep the right focus.

I usually put autumn decorations out in September and Halloween decorations out the second week in October (in addition to the fall decorations.

I just posted a few signs of this glorious season around my house...today!

www.saraancich.blogspot.com ( http://www.saraancich.blogspot.com )

Depends on the holiday. Christmas must be put away a whole month before Valentines, so no later than January 14th. I like that because I prefer NOT to get too much help putting things away while the kids are still home. Spring can come almost as soon as Valentine's is away, but I wouldn't bring out the bunnies and eggs too soon. We always have a flag out, but don't do much for actually decorating the house for the 4th of July. Back to school could be a time of mourning, so technically Halloween could go up then, but if you do, the real spiders and webs will move in before the day of the dead. But definitely, the ideal is to wait for fall (in my husband's opinion) or when it's cool enough to drag everything down out of the attic, otherwise the heat will make him think that he has already died and gone to h - e - double toothpicks!
I make sure that I have enough pumpkins and indian corn to squeek by until Thanksgiving, but after Black Friday is when we haul out the Christmas boxes and transform the house.

I can't say what holiday decorating is one of those things that I am so...what's the best way to put this...OCD about. I cannot decorate for Halloween until October 1st. I must take said Halloween decorations down on Nov. 1st. I can start to pull out Christmas decorations during mid-November, but the actual decorations tend to go up no sooner than the day after Thanksgiving (I have to pull them out a bit earlier sometimes, in order to take stock and see if anything has been mysteriously broken since last year).

My husband is much more relaxed about the decoration schedule and frustratingly asks me every year why I am so determined to stick to my arbitrary schedule. My general answer is that I am a little crazy, and since he knew that when he married me he has no right to complain about it now.

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The Soap Box ( http://www.blogher.com/andthatsmysoapbox.blogspot.... )

I do autumn things on September 1st and Halloween at the very end of September. Husband and I used to do Christmas very early, first week of November, because he worked offshore and we never knew if we would be able to put up the tree together. But this year is his first working in the office, so we can be normal and do it closer to Thanksgiving.

Liberal oilfield wife. I write, I hula hoop, I craft, and I listen to music you might hate.

http://www.unlikelyoilfieldwife.com

I'm hoping to do lots more this weekend, but I couldn't wait any longer and started decorating Tuesday night. I don't know what it is about Halloween, but I just love decorating in all of the spooky ways I can! I think some of it is because Martha Stewart seems to be as obsessed with it and I think she has done a lot to make Halloween and even bigger holiday. I love the way Stephanie has put masks on things in her house - totally want to do that too!

Wendy
http://southernstuf.blogspot.com

I decorate for Christmas in September to celebrate this little-known holiday. I then leave the tree up until Christmas because I am lazy.

http://teachinfourth.blogspot.com/2010/09/3rd-annu... ( http://teachinfourth.blogspot.com/2010/09/3rd-annu... )

Halloween is the greatest holiday and I think that decorating for it on the first day of autumn is completely appropriate…

Of course, if you're my friend, Gerb, you go a little all out:

http://teachinfourth.blogspot.com/2008/11/october-...

I am going to start decorating this weekend for Halloween then Nov 1st I will put a few Thanksgiving decorations out.

I couldn't wait to decorate so we started this past weekend. This year we decided on purple and black for our theme colors! We're making decorations out of cereal boxes... come on over to my blog to see what we've made so far. It's been fun and I'm officially in the holiday spirit!

I usually shoot for the beginning of the month - don't want to continually clean around stuff, or chase it down because my kids play with it (they're teenagers, for crying out loud!). It comes down soon after.

I will say that I am frustrated that Christmas is already on store floors. It takes away the magic and the beauty, IMHO.

:)

Marianne at Mealmixer ( http://www.mealmixer.com )

Halloween comes out at our house as soon as the kids start asking, which was last week. We like to wear our costumes all month:) I always try to encourage a theme for the kids.

I've started decorating for Christmas earlier every year, I just keep needing more time to enjoy it, since it passes by so FAST! Last year I had it all up the weekend before thanksgiving. I think I'll follow your lead and get it out the day after Halloween!! Great plan. Love the details in your family that you put so much love into. You're very inspiring.

A girl after my ow heart!! I am a total Christmas junkie. We decorate the week of Thanksgiving, but I start listening to Christmas music the after Halloween :)
Such a wonderful season and a great way to celebrate the birth of Christ!

oh how I love your blog .

Cheers,
Christina
www.theolivetreeboutique.etsy.com ( http://www.theolivetreeboutique.etsy.com )

Love your idea for decorating for Christmas as soon as Halloween passes...gives us extra time to really enjoy it all. :) I usually wait until after Thanksgiving...but I'm following your lead this year. Thanks for the inspiration!

I didn't know a neighborhood could hold home owners to a decorating time frame! That's kinda crazy.

Working in retail I am not a huge fan of decorating for the holidays because I live in it at work everyday to the point of the same CD replaying, surrounded by decorated trees and people in sweaters and dangling, lighted earrings, etc. But I do love my Christmas Tree which I usually put up around Thxsgiving. It is fabulous bc I got it for half price and it came already strung with lights. It also houses all the ornaments I have picked up along the way, each one with a story - one of those fabulous traditions my mother has handed down to me.

Heidi

heavenisabookstore.blogspot.com

I plan to decorate for Halloween this coming weekend - our neighborhood guidelines allow for decorations to be up 30 days before and 14 days after a holiday...I need to take inventory of what decor made it in the move and what didn't. After Halloween I'll switch to some fall/Thanksgiving decorations and we decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving :)

We are lucky to have one or two trick-or-treaters these days, so I've stopped decorating for Halloween at all. In fact, I've just offered to lend all my Halloween decorations to someone else this year.

I usually decorate for Christmas a week or two before the holiday (if at all). It's more fun when my niece and nephew come over to help.

Celeste Lindell
averagejane.blogs.com ( http://averagejane.blogs.com )

Decorating for the holidays is my favorite!!! When I'm home at my mom's, we deck out her place. End of September we put up all of the fall stuff; leafs, pumpkins, candles, some Halloween stuff (man I really wish I had pictures!). After Halloween we take down the Halloween stuff but keep the rest up for Thanksgiving. Right after that is when we redecorate again for Christmas. We take everything down that's "fall" & put up, fake snow (there isn't any real stuff in Texas) snowmen, the works! I believe sometime in January is when she takes is all down. I usually have to come back up here. I can't wait to see pictures of what you did!

I have to be careful with this one cause if i decorate too early I might never want to see another halloween decoration ever again in my life. After a while my house just feels cluttered and I want to rip it all down in one crazy fit of rage! But with a 7 year old daughter, it is almost impossible to decorate any later than the 1st of October :)

I try to put limits on when and how we decorate for holidays. Autumn is my favorite time of year. It ushers in a new school year, change in weather and all the best holidays. We decorate for Halloween October 1st. Then Fall decorations go up Nov. 1st. My hubby is Christmas crazy and I have to hold him off from putting up the Christmas tree until the day after Thanksgiving. The tree will stay standing until Valentines Day. (That's our compromise) Happy Decorating!

We usually wait until Oct. 1. I made dozens of spiders a few years ago. I string webs up all over my porch and put the spiders everywhere. Then I have one great big mama spider in the middle. I am working on finding the motivation to do it. I might just stick a pumpkin on the porch this year and call it good.

Ummm, I don't have any Halloween decorations per se. I have fall/autumn-ish stuff I just put out. I don't really decorate my house except for Christmas. Christmas is done the day after Thanksgiving. I don't put as much out as I'd like to due to heirloom pieces and an active 5 year old boy.

I can't figure out how to make my house look nice on it's own, decoratively speaking, much less during a holiday season! LOL

Elizabeth

@texasebeth ( http://twitter.com/texasebeth )  and My Life, such as it is.... ( http://texasebeth.blogspot.com )

I found some fantastic finds at the dollar store, and am getting ready to decorate! Don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I'm thinking a white can of spray paint will be involved.... :D

http://firewifekatie.blogspot.com/

We LOVE Halloween at our house! It is our favorite holiday. We started building our new props last weekend for this year's transformation of our house into the Cemetery Hotel. We will have a full walk-through spook alley run by our kids and the neighborhood teenagers this year. It's going to be awesome! We tend to start decorating at the tail end of September.

this year for Halloween. So I started working on things three weeks ago. Little things started popping up on the mantels and table tops and I think by Oct 1 I will be done. Then switch it up a bit for November, then right into the holidays. WOW I need to get back to work!

I linked up two projects I did this year, easy and fun!

Amy

I normally have my autumn decorations out now, with no Halloween stuff until October 1. I have some autumn stuff out as of right now, but not what I usually put out. Halloween stuff comes down on November 1st, but fall stuff stays out with a few Thanksgiving specific pieces through the day after Thanksgiving. We decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (or the day after that, depending on my husband's schedule). Christmas decorations come down a few days after Orthodox Christmas (Jan 6).

Contributing Editor Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )) blogs at Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ). She is a freelance writer and newspaper photographer.