Christmas at Our Home

Joel and I spent the day after Thanksgiving (tradition) decorating for Christmas and basically loving our life... This Christmas we are trying to focus as much as we possibly can on all of the blessings in our life and how grateful we are for God's provision and presence in our life. We would not have any of the joy, peace, comfort, love in our life if it weren't for Jesus coming to this world as a human to be near to us. THAT is why we celebrate Christmas, and decorations aside, that is what truly makes us joyful.

With that being said... I am a firm believer in your home reflecting how you feel. So that brings us to our joyful, peaceful, cozy Christmassy home. I have been so excited to decorate for Christmas this year! I'm ALWAYS excited about decorating for Christmas, but this year being our first Christmas in our new house made me extra excited. Particularly the fact that I now have a real life mantle to decorate... over a real life fireplace! Something about hanging our stockings over a real fireplace just completely makes the Christmas decor this year. It's by far my favorite part. Like I often do for most holidays and parties I went around the house and collected all of my red/green/gold/tan hard cover books and stacked them with our goodwill elephant bookends to hang our stockings on. And again like last year I gathered all of my green candle stick holders and red candles and threw them up there as well. The wire "NOEL" sculpture is courtesy of Target... I am obsessed with it. Sometimes Target makes things that are amazing and look like you didn't buy them at Target.

Last year I thought I wanted to go in the direction of ALL silver and gold this year for Christmas decorations... BUT when it came time to actually decorating I decided I would miss all of the colors of Christmas WAY too much if I did that. So the colors stayed, clearly. This year I even stepped it up a notch and got so into the idea of using bright "non-Christmassy" colors even and I love it... feels sort of old school/vintage but still modern and festive.

Speaking of old school/vintage one of my favorite decorations this year is this basket of vintage bulb ornaments that were my great grandma's... they are bright and funky and some even have glitter accents and thread wrapped on them. The colors are all amazing and make me so happy, but what makes me the most happy is having a piece of my great grandma in my home for the holidays.

I love using existing decorations in your house to enhance holiday decorations... when this wreath said "indoor use only" I knew it'd be a perfect fit for over our "live well" sign. I've had my eye on tree stumps lately and really wanted a slice for the center of our table. I spray painted the ends of those candles to give them a dipped in gold look and paired them with a few votives for a nice glowing touch. The runner is from a bag of old linens Joel's boss gave us to look through. This was the only thing I wanted and I LOVE it... again I love how the blue is a non-traditional Christmas color but it's got the deer and snowflakes. Overall I love the rustic, modern, and wintery vibe we've got going on here.

This is our mini tree 2.0... Last year Joel surprised me with a little mini-tree for our front entry table and I loved it so we kept the tradition going this year and he picked me up this little guy to greet our guests.

It wouldn't be a Christmas post if I didn't show our gold tree all lit up at night... we went with all gold ornaments again this year and love the simple classic look.

And you know I love showing the Christmas spirit throughout the whole house, not just the living room. So here's a little bit of Christmas in the kitchen...

... and in the hall bathroom with a little hand made tea towel made by my best friend.

So that's how we're celebrating the holidays these days. Usually cozied up on the couch with the tree lighting up the whole room.