Welcome, Nancy! I'm glad to hear that we've lured another one out of Lurkdom. At the moment, I'm feeling woefully behind (once again!) with my holiday decorating. I'm just now putting up my Autumn & Thanksgiving decs. I'll take them down the day after Thanksgiving, which is when I decorate big time for Christmas. It takes many days to get it all up, as I put of 5 trees of various sizes and decorate every room but our master bedroom & bath (our dobie gets into them there, so I've stopped). And, like Lynnencfan, I tweak them continually after that ;^D I leave mine up until the day after Twelfth Night, January 6th. For us, that's the last day of Christmas. Lynn

Thought I had started my above response with today's find, but see I didn't. It must have been on my other board. Today I went to a town about 20 minutes away with my sister. She was looking for a pair of winter boots that she had seen there. We stopped in a Walgreens to look. We don't have a Walgreens, but one is being built a few miles away in our sister city. Anyway today I found two 6 foot lighted trees in urns for $10 each at Walgreens. They were originally $39.99! I was really excited. They had three more and I really wish that I would have bought at least one more. The two I got are for the outside of the house in the front. We will be screening our covered back porch in soon and I should have gotten one for out there and I think that I might like the look of one in my entry. The size would be good for it. Oh well, at least I got the two.

Well, we're on a really tight budget this year, so he got me a necklace that I bought in the summer (which was also part of my anniversary present- it's a very nice necklace), and I got him a really cool chess set of the Greek gods and goddesses, which he picked out. I also promised to relearn how to play chess. Last year I got him a cast iron fire pit, which can be used either as a campfire or a grill. The way to his heart is through the stomach, so that worked well.

When my kids were young they would get to pick out one ornament of their choice each year. I would sometimes gift them with an ornament that reflected their interests at the time. When DD moved out she already had a good start for her own tree. DS doesn't have room in their place to put up a tree so we keep his for him. They still go on our tree each year. DD and a I were just talking about this very subject the other day. She and I have a habit of keeping all our ornies in the boxes they came in marked with the date of purchase etc. This year we've decided to get rid of some or most of the boxes. Like DD commented, it's only a keepsake because Hallmark said so on the box. LOL I plan to first get rid of the generic boxes. Not ready to toss the Hallmarks yet. DD,aother anal friend of hers and I are still discussing how we will keep track of the ornies without the boxes. DD suggested taking a pic of each one to be stored in an ornie case. LOL That's hundreds of pics in my case. We also like knowing that an ornie is missing when there is a leftover box. That way we know to look on the tree. How do the rest of you who have LOTS of ornaments store them? We have no basements here so they all have to stay in the attic crawl space above the garage.