I love driving around at night during this time of year and looking at the wide variety of Christmas decorations. It seems to be much more the norm no to string loads of lights from your house, and to generally festoon every surface with swags, greenery, lights, inflatable things, moving reindeer (and even one I saw with disco antlers) and more. 
Here are some other houses that I liked.
This house always has the most amazing Williamsburg-style display, complete with pineapple, apples and magnolia leaves.
This house had a huge, gorgeous wreath and nice white lights highlighting the foundation plantings. And I like that you can see their Christmas tree through the window.
Lots of wreaths, lights, and red bows and very simple.
It’s hard to see, but in addition to the wreath, there’s a deer and some greenery above the door.
In addition to their wreaths, 
This house has a huge magnolia wreath, two lighted trees and a big Moravian star above the door.
This was one of the more unusual lighting displays. The chimney is a very rough stone, and they’re shining two red and two green lights straight up, so it creates sort of a ripple or waterfall effect. I really had to look for a minute to figure this out.
There’s a lot going on at this house. Perhaps it tilts just a little over the edge towards overdone…
Candles in all of the windows, front is beautifully lit and nice swagged lighted.
This is the house where I spent Thanksgiving. I happen to know that there are THREE trees inside!
This is our local fire station.
This house also has a lot going on, but it works. Plus, the shingle work is great looking!
Which is your favourite?
I'm in complete agreement re. the no-nos. Thanks for the photos--this is truly what I miss about living in So. california: it's too warm and very few "colonial" homes with understated decorations. Have a super week.
ReplyDeleteMary
I think that the excitement is getting to Jones: he ate my new slippers; refused to go to daycare (and he loves it); got in trouble with Mini-Beast (Ouch!), etc......
Mary.. I am sure that you have all of that great mexican-influenced christmas decoration!
Deletexo
I like the one with the Moravian star best, but they are all pretty.
ReplyDeleteFor a less traditional look, where you can see everyone's trees, drive through the overlook at Clipper Mill some night.
Love Connor's antlers!
I am going to try and go by there at twilight and see if i can get a better picture! i will have to go to Clipper Mill Overlook. It's just a short hop from here.
DeleteI have a hard time with the cold LED lights also. However, our front door needs ONE strand of the warm light to replace the one burnt out over the summer.! And yes...I missed the October boat on that apparently this year. So no front lights for us, just 5 wreaths with red ribbons.
ReplyDeleteI like your simply decorated house but I also like ones that are truly over the top e.g. 34th St, hon. None of this half-assed in between.
btw, I hope that Williamsburg display is plastic. There is nothing worse than seeing rotting fruit on Dec 27th in our climate.
I love wreaths with red ribbons!
DeleteAnd I have had experience with dripping fruit and a warm winter. Ugh.
Dear Auntie Meg: You know my motto: "Only MORE is MORE!" So of course I love the first house w/all the lights & trimmings!!
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up near Williamsburg, I can tell you that seeing house after house w/W'burg decorations can get very boring. And ditto what Maureen Reynolds said, above: Hope those decorations are plastic! I've seen what time in the outdoors can do to real fruit on a wreath, and darlin', it's not pretty...
BTW: LOVE the pics above of Reindeer Connor!!
-- Miss M.A.
Come sit by me and we will enjoy the lights together!
DeleteOMG Miss MA! I remember spending hours decorating my tree and you coming in and asking when I'd finish it!
DeleteI'm afraid you would think my house is very tacky then, dear. I love the lights. They make me happy. I converted to LED a few years ago and find them quite nice. I string white icicle lights across the roofline (dear hubby climbs up on his 20-ft ladder to string them), colored lights are swagged around the picket fence, and teeny little white lights in the arbors.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the blow-up creatures, although I might succumb when I finally get grandchildren. There is nothing little ones love more than Christmas decorations, and the more the better there.
My neighbors are very happy with my decor as well. Everyone says they're the prettiest and best on the street!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas!
Cyndia... i am sure you have done a lovely job! it's just not my style, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. but still no to the blow up creatures.
DeleteWell, well why am I not surpised we are -- again -- in complete agreement. Reggie, too, is not happy with LED lights (hates 'em) and those vivid blue ones, too. Also he thinks the icicle stringy ones are nasty; people don't even bother to smooth out the wires, so most of them are hanging zig-zags. Best to leave them to trailers and convenience stores. And those inflatable blow ups bought at WalMart and other Big Box retailers? -- they are vile! In our area, people deflate them during the day, and leave them lying on their lawns in a mess, where they quickly become grubby. Really trashy. I'm a fan of old-fashioned lights, the kind my father put up in the '50s and '60s (and yes, I don't disapprove of colored ones, at least in moderation). In fact, I put up some of the large-scale outdoor ones on a row of lilacs at Darlington House last weekend. Red ones. Boy thinks it makes our place look like a bordello, but I like 'em! Oh, and my favorite of your photos? The one with the Magnolia wreath and the Moravian star -- love it! Happy Christmas, dear one!!
ReplyDeleteOf course! The blue lights i don't like are the LED ones, that are one step away from the end of the spectrum. Too blue!
DeleteAnd I agree about the deflated inflatables. It looks like a sad graveyard.
Meg I agree completely, it seems to me that simple vignettes, white lights, lots and wonderfully scented candles, berries and wreathes...perfect (for me)
ReplyDeleteLove and Hugs
Karena
Art by Karena
$75 NOVICA Giveaway
Agree!
DeleteHi, I am with you on colored lights + overdoing + blow ups + LED's! so dislike all of those. My favorite is the house that has a huge, gorgeous wreath and nice white lights highlighting the foundation plantings. Adore that you can see their Christmas tree through the window. xxpeggybraswelldesign.com
ReplyDeleteThere were so many other great houses, that I might have to take some more pictures!
DeleteI was going to go out over the next few nights and take some photos of the lights. We have some really pretty ones...and some great tacky ones. I love them all, classy and tacky, except for the LEDs that pretend to be white when they're really blue. But my favorite ones are the simplest ones. There's nothing better than an old Colonial out in the pitch dark country with a white candle in every window.
ReplyDeleteWe have one street here that has more lights that you can imagine. It's a small block of rowhouses and every.single.house. does lights. http://christmasstreet.com/
DeleteNot that I've ever used solid blue lights--and these days, I don't decorate at all for the holidays--but I always kind of liked them, at least the old school kind of big bulbs that, from a distance, looked like they had a pink dot in the middle.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Danville, Illinois, where the broad main drag consisted of two miles of early-2Oth century mansions lined up cheek-to-jowl all the way down Vermilion Street. This time of year, there were Queen Anne houses with every turret & balcony outlined in multicolored lights; Tudor manses whose half-timbered walls seemed to undulate under red & green rotating spotights; light-up plastic Santas waving from the roofs of Spanish haciendas; garishly painted plywood carolers ranged in front of Italian villas, and every other yard seemed to blaze with cheap kilowatts of gaudy blinking overkill.
But then, down at the end of all that visual chaos, was Danville's imitation Tara, a 1920's Colonial beauty with white clapboard & square pillars, whose sole decoration, year after year, was dull blue bulbs nestled deep into all the evergreens, including the 40-foot blue spruce. Nothing blinked, or called attention to itself but the serenity of all those calm blue lights casting their spell across the drifting snow was memorable. The last time I was there at Christmas was more than 30 years ago, but that elegant simplicity stays in my mind.
SG... the small blue LED bulbs are the ones i dislike. i love the big old bulbs, but they're hard to find now. there's a queen anne around here that sounds like the one you're talking about. must go take pix of it.
DeleteLove your image of your local Tara.
xo
Y'all may not know this but you can buy warm white LED lights, which mimic the incandescent lights but use much less energy. I prefer the cool white myself, and I've found that using a smaller bulb than I would in incandescent makes for less garishness!
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