Lights, garland - Christmas!

Weeks before any bells would jingle, decorating extraordinaire Kathy Bell and her husband of 44 years, Mike Sr., were already planning their Christmas decorating.

It’s not that they create a new holiday look each year for their two-story home in Newport Beach. Instead, it’s more a matter of matching schedules so that the family — which includes three adult children, two sons and a daughter — can carve out the time to do the work. They have to lug from storage 23 wardrobe-size boxes filled with decorations and set aside three days if they are going to continue the tradition of adorning the home’s outside and lower floor inside.

The Bells, who have been known to attract dozens of children and families in the Bayshores neighborhood to their Halloween decorations, said they enjoy helping others get into the holiday spirit — no matter what the holiday.

Kathy said the process at Christmastime is akin to creating a painting.

“We do the garland the first day, the outside the second day and the inside the third day,” she said, noting that the decorating begins after Thanksgiving and they dismantle it all the day after New Year’s.

Kathy usually lavishes extra attention on the home’s entrance gallery. This season, she garlanded the door frames with pine leaves intertwined with red and gold ornaments.

The living room’s 10-foot tree, adorned with hundreds of charming white birds and glass ornaments, scents the air. A model train is set up to circle the base of the tree. Kathy’s childhood stocking hangs on the fireplace mantle next to the 11 stockings belonging to her siblings.

Down the hallway, in the family room, a handmade painting depicting a Christmas scene of stockings dangling above a fireplace, is displayed above that area’s fireplace mantle.

A vintage copy of “The Night Before Christmas” sits on a coffee table, around which members of the family — typically a gathering of 25 — read excerpts on Christmas Eve. It’s become tradition to have each guest sign his or her name in the book under the year it was read.

Kathy has an eye for creative display and staging; she has owned the Corona del Mar-based children’s consignment store Young Seconds for 33 years.

For the family’s Christmas extravaganza, Kathy said she shops for exterior and interior decorations just about everywhere, from HomeGoods to Roger’s Gardens. The family has lost count of how many strands of lights, ornaments and Santas they have in the house, but Kathy can name two of her most treasured decorations.

Her collection, she said, wouldn’t be complete without a baby ornament of Mike’s that depicts a Santa Claus made out of pipe cleaners and her grandson’s handmade snowman ornament made out of Styrofoam.

“That’s like a $1 million to me,” she said. “I love them.”

Having put up their lavish decorations for as long as they have been married, the Bells were bound to have malfunctions along the way. The couple recalled the time the tree crashed to the floor before they headed out for Christmas service. There also was the time when Kathy’s collection of Byers’ Choice Ltd. handcrafted dolls lit on fire. A few of the carolers, who had been placed between raffia and lights, burned after the decorative material caught on fire.

But things have been easier over the years. Specifically, they no longer need multiple plugs and multiple outlets.

The Bells used to create a map that would pinpoint where each strand of lights could be plugged in, but thanks to Mike Sr., a custom-home supervising contractor, the plug-ins are now controlled on a X10 product, a device that enables the lights throughout the home to be turned on with the touch of a button.

Crowds of people, they said, stop and stand before the house, marveling at the sight of the perfectly arranged lights, garland and wreaths.

“Kathy adores this and so do I,” Mike said. “How can you not like this tree?”