This one is for Deba...

and anyone else interested in Christmas decorations from the past season.  I admit it would have been more timely if I'd sent these out in December!  The North Pole saga has been ongoing in our family for the past 13 years...ever since we moved to Attleboro and had room for a Christmas village.  We'd seen one on Martha's Vineyard years back and Kirk and I though it would be fun to collect when we had space.  Our collection grew astronomically in the space of about four years.  I learned how to carve styrofoam (with a cool hot knife).  We collected so many houses that they stopped fitting on the banquet table in our bay window.  The storage bins for the houses got relocated to our attic...which made them difficult to access.  So the last couple of years...I pretty much lost my mojo to set it all up.  Also...seemed like it became more and more 'my' project...so not as much fun doing it all alone.  Last year...it didn't even go up.  This year, I have to thank my friend Cyndi for getting my enthusiasm back.  She also sets up her own village and we enjoyed talking about how we could modify our displays and helped brainstorm with each other.  My goal was to reorganize all the houses so that I knew what bin contained what house, move the bins to storage shelving in the garage...so everything would be on one floor. I also wanted to add to the display so that I could carve styrofoam again...b/c it is so much fun!  Thanks also to brother Tom, who suggested I face some of the houses out towards the window to make it look pretty from the outside.  I'm enjoying looking at other's displays on You Tube and hope to have more ideas and changes to keep me excited about setting at least some of it up again this year!