It’s that time of year again, buying and decorating the tree, putting up the lights, mailing Christmas cards, and giving and getting presents. What better way to show your enormous holiday spirit than with Disney. This year, more than any previous year, it’s easy; there is a wealth of items available if you just look.

For the outside of your house there are inflatable characters, flags, signs, and lights. DisneyDirect has a good selection of outdoor decorations; Wal-Mart has a good supply too. You can also find 4ft tall inflatable Mickey & Tiggers at Walgreen’s for about $20. You will also find some goodies at craft stores like Michaels, the most common outdoor items that I’ve found there are yard flags, but they do have a selection of other good things. Places such as Lowe’s and Home Depot usually have some Disney Christmas decorations too.

Decorating the inside of your house has never been easier. 30 minutes at Wal-Mart will get you almost all you could need. But a trip to Target, Walgreen’s, CVS, Lowe’s, or just about any other store will find you something different and neat. I’m not going to be overly specific here, as each store will have different items, and the list would be exceedingly extensive, however a few things that are noteworthy are: Mickey, Minnie, and Tigger statues at Wal-Mart, some very nice ornaments at the Hallmark stores, some neat tree lights at Lowe’s, and Target as a good selection of Disney Christmas decorations too. As always you can find a large amount of items at DisneyDirect, but to list everything there, would be stating the obvious time and time again.

It can be almost like a game; searching for these things, try to see who can find the most Disney things while just browsing through the store. I think that you will be surprised at just how many things you find on a regular trip to the store, if only you keep your eyes open.

Minnie Mouse. The bane of my wife’s existence, she loves Mickey, Minnie loves Mickey – you see the problem? So to say that Minnie is about the least welcome character in our home would be putting it mildly. While I was preparing for this article this week, looking through stores and websites I came to realize something. Minnie is not popular. It is fairly difficult to find something with just Minnie Mouse. Oh sure you can find a lot of things with Mickey and the gang, or Mickey and Minnie, but I was pretty hard pressed to find things with only Minnie. Wal-Mart has a statue of Minnie, and a few toys, but mostly the girls’ toys have the Princesses on them. Hallmark has an ornament that was just Minnie Mouse, but really that was about all I could find, and I looked – I looked all over. I guess if you are a die-hard Minnie Mouse fan your best bet is to go to DisneyDirect.com and buy your things that way.

Since Christmas is just a week away I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Wal-Mart and Target both have very nice selections of Disney wrapping paper. Sure other places have some too, but these two places had the largest selections that I could find.

I guess when it comes down to it almost everyone that wants a mouse in their house doesn’t want it to be Minnie Mouse. Everyone wants Mickey Mouse in their house.

Well that’s an earful – until next time, I’m Scott Short