As much as I try not to have an overwhelming amount of things surrounding us in our home, there is a major, huge, gigantic exception and that would be Christmas decorations!  I love to decorate for Christmas, and embarrassingly enough have about 100,000 boxes of Christmas decorations that take up space and add to the clutter.  The difference is these boxes of stuff make me happy and I have no desire to get rid of ANY of them.  Just call me a Christmas decor hoarder.

One reason I have so many boxes is because I collect Christmas village pieces.

And not just one village set but many.  None of my village pieces go together.  They are from multiple collections.  Many of the pieces were given to me by my family when I was a kid.  My brothers and sister would pick out village pieces for me, and really you can’t go wrong they are all so cute!  I would get people and village decor in my stocking.  To one person it is awesome, to another it is complete clutter and junk.  I get that.  But this clutter makes me happy so I’m breaking my own rule and it stays no matter how many months of the year it collects dust in a box.  Could I live without it?  Of course!  But why would I if I love it?

The people, the houses, all the little tiny details, I just adore it all.  Really to me it is art.  All decorating is art so I think I am going to self proclaim myself a Christmas decorating artist the next time someone gives me a hard time about it. 

Every year my husband points out how all the people are on completely different scales and that some are 3 xs as large as others.  He is completely right!  Every year after that he lets me know how much space this all takes up, and every year when I remind him how much I love it he says he is going to start buying me a new set to start over.  Soon to be 8 years of marriage later I have yet to see one single village piece from him.  I think maybe he just can’t bring himself to buy it, and so my old pieces stay.

It is an easy way to bring my barn obsession indoors :-)

These kids carry in the fresh milk and eggs every day.

And who doesn’t want a little pile of fake wood in their house?  Come-on now!

I even have a lady who sells flowers directly from my living room.

Children making snow angels.  Horse drawn carriages.  And it is always a white Christmas for these guys!

This year I don’t have anywhere to plug my village pieces in without cords hanging all over the place.  Boo!  I’m going to have to figure something out in the future because I also adore their soft candle light glow.

In a nut shell my husband loves me, and so he puts up with Christmas village decor.  If you ask me I think he secretly likes it but would never admit to that.  It reminds me of my Grandfather saying he doesn’t like cats but every time he came to our house he let my cat sleep on him the whole time.  All I’m saying is actions speak louder than words, don’t you think?
My husband puts up with (secretly loves!) my Christmas decor and in exchange I make him Nanaimo bars.  Pretty fair deal don’t ya think? ;-)  Love is a powerful thing!

What about you?  Do you collect anything or is that a beast you’d rather stay away from?