"You've seriously got 9 Christmas trees?!!"

Yep.

There's the main tree - the 'Father Christmas' tree (it wears the hat and the big man will be leaving more presents under it) in front room tree. It strictly only red and gold baubles, plus ornaments the kids have made through the years and our annual 'buy just one new ornament each year' tree decs:

Then the newest tree to our collection, the new dining room tree....an absolute bargain from our local Goodwill for $12.50 (just under 8 quid). This currently has all my quirky ornaments that used to hang on my sewing lair tree (coming up next) and 'brights' baubles. And yes, I haven't got all the lights working yet but who could compain for $12.50?!

Then there's my sewing lair tree......looking a bit bare as we've moved its finery to the dining room tree, but I have plans for it. I'm making sewing and craft-related ornaments for it, just like the mice did for Cinderella...ok, the mice didnt make ornaments for Cinderella, they made her ballgowns, but a Christmas tree in a ballgown is even too silly for me...

Then there's Mr. D's office/music room tree, our smallest big tree, last year's Goodwill adoption (Luca Brasi won't let us adopt any more pets currently but she tolerates new trees....or as she calls them new scratching posts):

The last one downstairs is a bit of a cheat, so not counted in the 9 proper: the trophy room (otherwise known as downstairs loo) tree, and it's glow in the dark too! We love our whimsy!

Then upstairs is the one tree we used to be able to fit in our home in the UK, and therefore our oldest tree, now 5000 miles from home in our master bedroom. This one is sorely lacking in ornaments, I need to get making for next year. From this pic it looks like I'm going to have to do some work on the base to stop it being so lop-sided:

Then out on the landing, in the 'den', is the tree we bought a couple of weeks after moving to the USA so we wouldn't feel homesick without a Christmas tree in the house (the one above was being transported through the Panama Canal to Long Beach California from the UK at the time). This is slowly becoming our 'British' tree with union jack baubles etc to match the decor in the den. Mr. D has plans of 'donating' this tree to Melchett (you'll see why in a minute when you see her current tree) and getting a red or blue tree for the den next year if we can find one in the sales or perhaps in Goodwill:

Then as mentioned, here's Melchett's tree. This was the girls' tree in their bedroom back in the UK and was this tiny because it was all we could fit in there. I kid myself that one of the reasons I have so many trees is that when the girls leave home they can inherit a decent seized one with some family 'history' from us:

Then there's Goth Child's tree. GC plays this game where she pretends to be a Grinch/Scrooge and bah humbugs Christmas.....but actually she loves it just as much as us and I'm not TOTALLY convinced she pulls off the 'ironic' wearing of all her Christmas sweaters.... and t-shirts.....and socks.... But accordingly, she has a Charlie Brown poor little tree:

And then there's the guest bedroom fibre-optic Christmas tree:

Actually, this is our oldest tree from the days when we used to have a real tree in the front room back in Shropshire and me, with my allergy to pine trees used to itch and cough and sneeze all Christmas. It needs some serious love and attention, and some branch fluffing. If you want to see our real trees over the years (over 20 years worth of trees I think, I wrote this post with nostalgic pics in 2011.....you can see the beautiful if tiny cottage we used to live in and the girls growing up).

So that's it. 9 fake three-dimensional trees ranging from 1.5ft to 9ft and a glow-in-the-dark Christmas tree banner in the downstairs loo.

Oh hang on.....there's one more.....the kitchen tree. It's a diddy-one, but still beautiful (if you're as obsessed as I am):

And of course, all the trees come into their own in the dark...

And you know I'm going to be spending hours and hours trying to get the best bokeh shots from them all. These are my best so far:

But my Christmas decorating obsession doesn't stop with trees. I'll show you around a bit more in the next post. And show those of you who were worried seeing Mr. D up on the roof on my instagram account recently, the results of our decorating this year outside.....yep, we're tacky, and we don't care!

I hope you're all having fun doing what you want to do this Christmas. I'd love to see links if you want to leave them in the comments.

Happy Holidays as they say here!