Decorating for Christmas

I have not been feeling my best but I got moving enough to put some Christmas decorations up.  The beautiful wood house scene is from Crate & Barrel.  We saw it on, ***drumroll*** Kristina Werner's blog, and Bob and I just thought it would look perfect on the shelves here in the livingroom where we spend so many hours.  

Last December when we moved in with my mother-in-law to take care of her, it was kind of a "rush job" because we became aware that she could no longer live alone and decided that it wasn't the right time for the Memory Care unit we had visited.  Our stuff was poured in here on top of her things and we just sort of squeezed in.  Slowly we have moved this and that to incorporate some of our things, especially in the livingroom which is where we watch television and have our computers.  It has become apparent that Betty doesn't actually remember many of her things, and certainly not where they are located, so I feel more comfortable moving her photo's to a different shelf or her numerous knick knacks (dust depository) to a gathered spot rather than everywhere.

With all that being said, we have a few shelves we can call our own and this is what we have done with one of them. 

The tree is up (although I do notice after taking the picture that I only 1/2 decorated it), the Snow Village houses are in the front window, the top of the hutch looks Christmasy and my  lighted church has found a spot on an unused chair.  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I set up Betty's 4 ft. tree in the den next to the televison where she can see it as she sits in her recliner.  I put the lights on and added a few of the decorations and then kept trying to get her to help.  She always loved decorating her 8 foot Christmas tree so I had hope that I could get her interested in doing something.  She was at it for at least 20 minutes and was singing along with Christmas carols, as well as the dreaded tongue clicking. Imagine my surprise when I walked in and realized she had not added even one ornament to the tree.  I have no idea what she was doing?  Alzheimer's is such a sad disease.  We will try again today.  In the meantime I have added a few more and hopefully she will think she did it.