We are entering my favorite time of the year. The stores are beginning to gear up for the holiday season. It seems that each year the merchants begin their displays earlier. The major magazines begin to have holiday themes and Christmas decorating ideas beginning in August. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the holiday time. I have found, for me, that the best way to enjoy the holidays is to keep it simple. I try to keep this in mind in everything I do from my Christmas decorating ideas to the foods I prepare for guests.

For several years my husband and I would have a Christmas open house. We invited co-workers, neighbors, friends and relatives. Each year the list of people we invited would grow and so would the headaches and stress of getting ready for the event. I began making homemade candies a month prior to the event. We made homemade candies, cookies, bars and a wide variety of finger foods. I would comb the magazines and stores to come up with the latest Christmas decorating ideas so that each year I would have new displays for our guest to see. We would have so many people in the house that you could hardly move, let alone admire the Christmas decorating ideas that I had come up with. We spent all of our time filling punch bowls, making coffee and replenishing serving platters. We decided that we needed to have a different way to celebrate the holidays with friends.

We looked at the list of people that we invited and agreed that we could eliminate co-workers from the list. We each had holiday parities at work where we could celebrate the season. We then decided that we would have smaller gatherings on three different evenings during the season. This is how we started to keep things simple. We invited neighbors over for one evening, friends for another and relatives on another. We serve appetizers and drinks. I still make a variety of homemade sweets, but now I have a cookie exchange with co-workers at our house. This gives me time with co-workers outside the office setting and also gives me a variety of cookies to serve. I still come up with different Christmas decorating ideas, and with fewer people in the house you can actually see the displays. I concentrate on decorating the trees well. We place one in the living room and one in the family room. I also have candles and greenery arranged on the tables. I also like to use large vases filled with a variety of evergreens along with red and white carnations. Add a few twinkle lights here and there and my Christmas decorating is complete.

The moment that Thanksgiving comes to an end, stores have their Christmas decorations hung up and on display. The malls have their Christmas decorations running rampant with holiday music playing in the backgrounds. Santa arrives at the malls for excited children to whisper their wishes to. Christmas decorations start to slowly appear on houses as you drive down the road. Each day closer to Christmas, a new house has put up some Christmas decorations. Some of them are elegant and tasteful while others are outdated and overwhelming. Some of the people in my neighborhood need some new Christmas decorations.

The entire month of December is engulfed in Christmas decorations. There is just something about driving home in the evenings and seeing the houses aglow with lovely Christmas decorations. The lights on the outsides of homes are even accented more when there is a layer of snow covering the ground. Christmas decorations can definitely set the mood for the upcoming holidays.

Though, in recent years, some of the Christmas decorations have gotten a bit out of control. While it is nice to decorate for the holiday, it is a bit too much to have your entire yard and rooftop covered with Christmas decorations. It is wonderful if you really love the Christmas holiday, but have some consideration for your neighbors. Besides, the true meaning of Christmas is not to see how many Christmas decorations you can cram onto your property before someone has a fit about it.

Almost every store you can imagine sells all types of Christmas decorations nowadays. The large chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart sell more decorations than ever before and for some reasonable prices. At the end of each season, I try to stock up on any Christmas decorations that were leftover and may be selling for a discounted price. I do that for wrapping paper as well. Sometimes, you can get some wonderful and attractive Christmas decorations for your tree or your house, for some amazing prices. Most of my Christmas decorations were purchased when they were on sale. There are always aisles and aisles of decorations in the stores. Some aisles have Christmas decorations that are for the tree. There are aisle that strictly have decorations for outside. Anything you can imagine, someone sells it.

I personally am a sucker for homemade Christmas decorations. My daughter is in elementary school and every year she make a Christmas decoration in a class and I cherish them. They are hung on the trees or placed lovingly on a shelf. Homemade decorations make wonderful gifts and are so much more meaningful than any Christmas decoration that you can buy in the stores.

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