Lake house holiday cheer

In a couple weeks I'm hosting a small gathering of friends at our lake house, so the husband and I drove up there today for me to put out my santa decor and see if there were any holes that still need to be filled in advance of our holiday ladies weekend. Plus I needed to hand water a couple of the landscaping beds and check the Christmas light wrapped oak in the backyard to make sure our neighborhood tree rats hadn't wrecked my hard work yet again.

I love the santa above that I put on the back porch coffee table, even though he's really Christmas beach themed. Because seriously... who could resist St Nick in his sunglasses, flip flops and old fashioned blue swimsuit.

I looked all over for a double sided Christmas flag in shades of blue to hang off the boat dock, but finally had to give up since I didn't have time to get a custom one made. Maybe next year. This red and gold one will have to suffice. And I'm just lucky my brand new holiday flag didn't get a good dousing since a couple ducks were paddling around beneath our boat dock, unbeknownst to me. They came out flapping and quacking when I was putting up the flag and about scared the bejesus out of me.

These two Fitz & Floyd mugs in the pic below come from a line created back in the early 90s. Back when I started collecting santas at the tender age of 24, my then boyfriend-now husband bought me my first santa cookie jar that I've proudly displayed every year as the collection grew. I found these two matching mugs from that same line on eBay this fall for a steal, Russian santa with the bear, that I took up to the lake house to put at the coffee station as a sentimental reminder of the original one I have here at the big house on the family room bookshelves. 

I gotta say, it's looking pretty done. The only thing I don't really like at this point is the larger dining table decoration because it looks a bit sparse. I think I just need to make a run to one of our local craft stores to get some pretty shatterproof balls to give the tablescape a more finished look. In the pic below, on the bottom shelf, you'll see a cute little Radko ornament of santa in his motor boat that coordinates with a santa boating print I found on Etsy. 

The ornament stand I ordered was way too tall for boating santa, so I brought it back to our primary residence to swap out with a smaller stand I was using in our family room bookshelves for a larger Radko ornament. I also ordered a snowflake front door mat to match the snowflake and wreath combo front door decoration I made. I really think that oughta do it for the lake house this Christmas!