Christmas Ornaments and stuff

I have shamelessly stolen Purplepassion’s Christmas tradition - but hey, that's what friends are for!

Since I don't have children, I've adopted the "Year in Review" ornament tradition for my nieces. Every year I get each of them an ornament symbolic of something in their lives that year and I personalize them with name and year.

This year Niece1 is 6 years old and performed in her first dance recital which included ballet - so her ornament is a pair of ballet slippers. Niece2 is 4 years old and into princesses, so her ornament is a princess crown. Brand new Niece3 turns 1 on 12/21, so she's getting a pink and white candy cane ornament.

I also buy an ornament from wherever we travel and friends often bring them back to us as souvenirs, so I always have new ornaments to display.

The problem I'm facing this year is that I have too many ornaments. We live in 2 bedroom apartment (about 1000 suare feet) on the third floor, so a full-size tree is impractical: if it's real it's a pain to drag in and drag out, and if it's fake it's a pain to store - so we've decided to get a 3' tabletop fake tree. The thing is we have ornaments for a 6'+ tree. I'm going through the ornaments and getting rid of the generic glass balls, etc - we'll probably give them to Goodwill so they can sell them in their stores.

Anyway, my house is 1/4 decorated and 3/4 disaster because everything is half in and half out. I have a lot of Christmas knick-knacks I like to put out, but in order to do that I need to take down the year-round knick-knacks which need to go into the Christmas knick-knack boxes, but I can't take them out till I take the others down...hence the stress (sigh).

I swear I'm about to hang an ornament on each ear and throw some tinsel on my head and declare myself our Christmas decoration. Hell, pass me some well-spiked egg nog and I'll even sing carols...

Speaking of carols I love Burl Ives, I really, really do - how can you not? - but after a weekend of listening to my digital cable Christmas music channel, I want to poke my ears with a Christmas themed knife every time I hear Burl's holly jolly voice!