Decorating for Christmas

I spent last Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday decorating for Christmas.

On a cabinet in the living room I placed the Nativity scene which I have had since I purchased it on a trip to Mexico in the early 1980s.

Many Mexican homes will have very elaborately landscaped Nativity scenes which include Bethlehem and a crowd of villagers and animals.  The clay figures of the residents of Bethlehem typically look like Mexican villagers.  I have collected them over the years, and, now that I have lived in Mexico for the past two Christmas seasons, I have added considerably to the collection.  

Last year I simply laid out green felt on the living room floor in front of the window.  I put some books under the felt to create hills.  This is a picture of the layout that I posted on the blog last year.

Since then, you may recall, I bought a long low table for houseplants which is in front of the window.  I arranged some other small tables around it and covered everything with felt.  I set my skinny Christmas tree on one of the small tables.  I created a river and waterfall using aluminum foil covered with blue cellophane.  I had a couple bags of stones from last year, and the bag of "heno"... similar to Spanish moss... to naturalize the scene.

Here is this year's scene, which I think came out better than ever...