Christmas decorating

So Chris and I got back from the Arkansas Thanksgiving festivities on Sunday morning, and we began decorating for Christmas.

First, we unpacked the tree--we're not ones for real trees although we appreciate their beauty.

We knew we wanted the tree in front of the French doors so that everyone could see it from the street.

We then unpacked our ornaments. We are so fortunate that we have lots of family ornaments, ornaments that we've purchased over the past years and a few ornaments from each of our childhoods. Once we got it all out of the attic, we realized we had lots of boxes to sort through.

And the boxes piled up.

When Chris and I first began dating, we, or I more so, discovered these Cannon Falls S'Mores ornaments. I love them because they are s'mores, and I want to squeeze them! We've purchased several overall the years, and I always love the cute little characters.

This is me fighting the lights. Not too dramatic, but just checking everything and making sure I like where everything is strung.

Porter really loved the lights, and he thought that he needed to lay on them to really welcome Christmas.

Here I am still working on the lights, and making sure they were strung right all the way up to the top.

Look how good our tree looks! I love the gold fabric on the bottom, and Chris added the fabric ribbon from Jenny, and you can see how nice all the ornaments look!

Here is a cute shot of some of the s'mores ornaments that we like. This is one for the year we got married. It's a cute little groom with a bride in a veil.

We have lots of cool ornaments from my family, including lots of ornaments from my grandmother Jenny. Some of the really cool ones include ornaments like this one that actually fits over a light. This Santa Clause glass ornament fits over a light and then looks like it is a built-in light piece. Very cool. 

Here you can see a little bit of our mantel, including our personalized stockings, which my grandmother made, and you can see the little ceramic "people" that tell me Christmas is here.

These ceramic Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus have always been in my grandmother's window, and now that Chris and I have upgraded our Christmas displays, we're fortunate that they have joined our collection.

For some reason, I just loved them to death, and they mean Christmas to me. So now their new house is on our mantel.

Tonight, we had our neighbors Sean and Nicole and friends Matt and Laura over for our official house lighting party, complete with homemade apple cider and cheese straws. Chris did a great job on the house's exterior.

 

Happy holidays to everyone!