In the spirit of Christmas, I’m going to tell the truth. This is not my current state of home decor. This was my village five years ago  (I wrote about it here), but I’m not sure we’ve set it up since then. It’s a lot of intricate work, but beautiful when it’s complete.

The village is at its prettiest when the sun is going down and the lights begin to illuminate the figures.

I’m almost there, though. We’ve hung the wreath and hooked up the electricity.

Maybe almost is not quite the right word.

We’ve cleared off the shelf so that we can put out all the serving pieces. It’s really easy when friends and family visit; I just tell them to grab something off the shelf to serve their food contributions. Right now we only have the first piece out — new this year is the Nora Fleming square baking dish. I blame my friend Michele for getting me started on these; the Santa hat is just too darn cute, and my rationale is that the dish is the perfect size for the empty nest and can be used all year with different trim pieces.

I also switched out the mug shelf. I went back through my archives to see if I ever talked about my mugs, and I did, but somehow the photo is gone.  Suffice to say, I have a dozen cute mugs and we use them for everything during the holidays, including for soup and as silverware caddies.

So out there in blogland, everyone is showing their completed holiday decor. They’ve been showing it since before Thanksgiving in some cases.

Aren’t you glad to know that there is someone like you out there? Just keeping it real, friends.