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!

Pre-Christmas festivities

I feel sorry for Thanksgiving. It's like the opening act for Christmas. Thanksgiving even has to have Santa end all its parades.

Even though I feel bad for Thanksgiving, I too rush to get in the Christmas spirit. This year, on the day before Thanksgiving, Chris and I shopped at Hobby Lobby. They had all their Christmas items 50% off. It was great!

The weekend before, Chris had worked to hang lights on the outside of our house. This is always very exciting to him, and this year was especially important since it's the first time we've (he has) hung them on our house.

Here are some photos of his handy work:

You'll see that our neighbors still, rightfully, had their Halloween/Thanksgiving pumpkins and hay out, but that's ok. We're comfortable as the first people out of the gate.

Pretty acorn wreath from my grandmother, and it matches our door perfectly.

You can see a little of the glow from the lights. They are LED, and put off a slightly blue hue, but not the crazy bright blue hue that your tacky neighbors use.

With his masterpiece!

Some night shots and interior decorating shots to come.

Happy holidays!