Helen Lloyd goes all out when it comes to decorating her Grovetown home.
"If you don't have Christmas spirit, you'll definitely get it sitting in here," she said. "It just makes you happy."
She also spreads the spirit to her Valley Brook subdivision neighbors, their families and her friends.
"We'll get together and eat cookies and enjoy the decorations," she said. "I like sharing it with people and getting people excited about the holidays."
Among her most noticeable decorations are her villages and trains, which create separate city, suburb, farm, mountain and pond areas on one side of her living room.
"I've been doing this for about the last 10 years," she said. "I did it with my parents when I was a kid and always enjoyed setting them up. I remembered how much I enjoyed them, so I figured I would start doing it again."
Lloyd started putting the village displays together the first full week of November and finished the beginning of this month. She would work for three to four hours a day planning, organizing and setting the people, stores and homes in the proper place, she said.
"Each year, I like to change it up, so it's not the same all the time, so I have to do some planning and figure out what I have and what I can do with it," she said. "It's always the first thing I do because it takes the longest and the most patience."
On the other side of the living room is a Christmas tree filled with artificials of varying colors and sizes, a couple of small birdhouses ornaments, and if you look closely, you'll also spot a few nests in the branches of the tree.
Throughout the living room, there are other holiday figurines, angels, bears and decorations, many of which light up or play music.
"It looks so beautiful in here at a night," she said. "You can sit and look at everything for hours. It really gets you in the Christmas spirit."
The Family: Helen Lloyd and her dog, Blue, a 10-year-old Beagle
The Home: One-story brick house with four bedrooms and three baths
It's a Fact: Lloyd is a retired school bus driver and has lived in the home since 2001.
The Neighborhood: Valley Brook
Location: Grovetown
Schools zoned: Brookwood Elementary, Grovetown Middle and Grovetown High schools
Nearby Major Roadways: Interstate 20, Jimmie Dyess Parkway, Wrightsboro Road, Gordon Highway
Nearby places of interest: Fort Gordon
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012. All Rights Reserved.
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