All Packed Up

There's the majority of the trees, stuffed back in their boxes waiting to be taken downstairs. Not nearly as pretty as they had been, huh?

And here, here is the tower of totes to go to the garage storage. Whew! That is the majority of the work, right there! And hubby is none-the-wiser that I have corners of stuff left in the craft room that needs another tote. Shhhh! Dont let on that you know!

Accomplish Anything?

Not really. I spent the day moving around totes, packing up trees (ok, I didnt pack them, hubby did... but I had to undecorate them all and get them 'ready') and taking photos of everything. At some point the photos will become my inventory and keep me from buying stuff I dont need, but at this point they are just messy photos in a digital folder on my laptop.

Oh, and when something was broken and hot-glue-able, I fixed it immediately. Why? (asked by hubby) Because I know that there is no way I will fix things in the fall when it is time to decorate again. So, I took the time to fix things now.

And if you thought my craft room looked bad yesterday with all the mess, you should see it tonight with 8 open totes and still has piles of stuff to be gone through, photographed, packed, fixed, etc. Good thing tomorrow is not only another day, but is a day where the hubby and kids go off to work and school and I should be able to accomplish a bunch more without the interference I had today. (...extremely important question about pizza puffs, setting up a connection to the wireless printer from the new laptop, putting dirty dishes back in the dishwasher after hubby took them out, looking for the silver bell the cat stole off a snowman, checking FaceBook and text messages...)

For now, I am sitting in bed surfing my favorite blogs, watching something stupid on TV while trying to keep warm. For some reason my fingers and my nose are chilly.

I'll catch ya up to date tomorrow.

UnDecorating Progress?

The inside of the house is coming along... kind of. My brilliant idea was to make a list of the themes I want on my trees next year then to go around with a bag and collect all the ornaments that would go with that theme.

Uhhh, so now the floor in my craft room is full of such bags, extra supplies I intended to use for one craft or another and undecorated small trees

while the living room still has piles of stuff moved from other places and totes that never did get put back.

Back? Back would be the garage where my husband erected these large shelves to hold my Christmas totes. Ummm there are 2 up there, but it holds 8 total. The rest might have made it out of the house, but not up to the shelf... and sit here by the patio furniture. *sigh*

Thank Goodness tomorrow is another day! I hope to undecorate every tree and get them disassembled and boxed. Then I will just be left with the decorations to pack up. Wow, that doesnt sound like much of an accomplishment when I see it in writing. *double sigh*

Really, I did accomplish SOMETHING.

My House at the Holidays

This is what my dining room and living room looked like on December 1st. Rubbermaid totes everywhere in the house, open and overflowing with holiday decorations and supplies. OMG, how can I possibly wade through it all? I had thought it was well organized last year when we put it all away, but as I was trying to put up trees, finding exactly what I wanted wasn't as easy as I had hoped. It took 2 weeks to decorate... I never did get all the totes out of the house.

This is what it looked like on Christmas Eve.



My craft room tree:
My kitchen counter tree:
My Peppermint Kitchen tree:


The Snowman tree in the living room:

The main family tree with the kids' handmade ornaments (a little rearranging done by the cats and Santa):

Plus there are trees in each bedroom. Whew!

How am I ever going to get it all down and packed up in an organized fashion so that next year is a breeze? Stay with me over the next few days and see what does and doesn't work as I try some new ideas for undecorating and packing up the holidays.