Christmas Decor

I had a lot of fun decorating our new house this year for Christmas.  As I would open up the storage containers I even discovered some new goodies I must have picked up on clearance last year.  What a nice surprise!

We don’t have a mantel or entertainment center, which are the more popular areas to decorate.  So I decked out the top of a bookcase in our living room with vases full of colorful ornaments.


I hung our stocking on the upstairs banister.  Then I strongly warned the girls that if they played with the stockings and filled them with their toys, Santa wouldn’t have anywhere to put presents for them and they wouldn’t get anything at Christmas.  It must have worked – they haven’t laid a finger on them!

 
I temporarily replaced the “Keep Calm and Carry On” print in the kitchen with a seasonal goodie that was a free printable from a  fun blog, Craftily Ever After.  I printed off the large print through Sam’s Club photo center (the cheapest around).  The red berry wreath was hung up on the pantry door.


I tried to warm up the pillow situation with a couple of homemade additions.  You know I have been wanting a sweater pillow for awhile now and so when I found an old off-white sweater in my closet that was going to the garage sale stash, I cut it up and made a quick cover-up.

My little baby, the NOEL pillow, was whipped up mostly with goodies I had running around the house.  I used a freezer paper stencil with a beautiful scripty font to spell out NOEL on leftover drop cloth (from when I recovered the dining table).  Then I made my own cording to go around the edges and stuffed it with an old bedroom pillow that had seen better days.

 
I hung my beloved ornament wreath on the front door.

 
The top of the piano is a beautiful place to layout tablescapes.  I placed a few framed photos of printable I found on blogs and a couple mini Christmas trees in silver buckets.


I put special ornaments on the mini trees: “Daddy and Me” and “Grandpa and Me”.  After I took this picture I glued some red and white ribbon on the metal buckets.

I framed some vintage Christmas carol sheet music that I had in the piano bench and hung it on the wall.

I hung a fake greenery swag over the dining room windows and spiffed it up with some gold ornaments, red ribbon, and…

 
LIGHTS!

 
Our Christmas tree


I decorated the tree this year with only soft or wooden ornaments, as well as handmade ornaments from the girls.  This insured that I didn’t freak out too much about breakables or random metal hooks.  Granted, I did still get annoyed when Piper would bring me ornaments, but it was better than the alternative.


I hung this large print on the wall behind the tree which ties the room together.  Get your own copy from the creative gals over at eighteen 25.

Lastly I made some fun bunting and hung it from the ceiling in the kitchen.  I had also purchased some cute green Christmas fabric to intersperse among the two red prints, but decided that I wanted to repurpose the bunting for my sister-in-law Rachel’s baby shower in January and I didn’t want to make more work for myself by having to tear out the green fabric.  So I made it only red.