WASHINGTON — New at the White House this holiday season: penguins, snowmen and snow women and hanging snowflakes.

Returning this season: larger-than-life replicas of dogs Bo and Sunny, an 18½-foot Blue Room tree dedicated to military families and a gingerbread White House — covered in dark chocolate, instead of white chocolate as in years past, and weighing in at nearly 500 pounds.

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, expect to welcome more than 68,000 guests in the weeks before Christmas.

They’ll be greeted at the East Wing entrance by a family of plywood penguins before walking down a hallway with paper snowflakes hanging overhead. There’s one snowflake for each state and U.S. territory, along with others made by schoolchildren who adorned them with handwritten wishes.

Outside the hallway windows, 56 snowmen and women, some wearing hats and scarves or earmuffs, look on from the first lady’s garden.

In all, some 62 trees and 70,000 ornaments, most of them reused from years past, decorate the White House.

The Fraser fir that dominates the Blue Room features messages to U.S. troops from their families on a ribbon that wraps around the tree. Its decorations were inspired by the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag. Each family will receive their portion of the ribbon after the holidays as a keepsake.

Nearly 90 volunteers from across the country spent from the day after Thanksgiving through early last week decorating the building. Among them was first-time volunteer Cheryl Forbes, who said she was surprised to end up working in the Oval Office.

“It took me a minute to take it all in,” said Forbes, a vice principal at a Bronx, N.Y., charter school.

“Just to see where a president sits, it’s indescribable.”

Four designers whose clothes Michelle Obama has worn also designed and decorated three rooms on the ground floor.

Carolina Herrera was responsible for the China Room, Duro Olowu handled the Vermeil Room and the library was turned over to the duo of Carol Lim and Humberto Leon.

Herrera decorated the China Room using ribbon in the shade of blue that was used to trim the Obama china service, which was introduced this year. It’s called Kailua blue and is meant to evoke the waters around Hawaii, where President Barack Obama was born and celebrates Christmas annually. The China Room is where presidential place settings used throughout history are displayed.