Holiday Home Tour

I love Christmas.  Love, love it.  I usually put up the decorations early (think pre-Thanksgiving even) and then re-arrange them a few times throughout the season to keep it fresh.  This year, I'm particularly happy to have my OWN home to decorate.

Come on in for a holiday samplin' of our home:

Here we are in the living room.  The formal one, that is.  We don't do much living here but at night we sometimes plop down for family time.  I love having a formal living room with no TV in it.  I made the little tree on the table, if you remember, and I still think it's fab.  The runner was a Super Saturday (read church) project.  The books are our favorite Christmas books plus another Super Saturday notebook project filled with Christmas stories and the scriptures on top, all ready for our Jesse Tree selection for the night.

This is the other side of the living room and our Jesse Tree in the corner.  Sometime later I'll show you all the ornaments I free-hand made out of felt for it.  But, right now most of them are still waiting to be hung and I would definitely lose them if I let them out of their special box.  My grandma's Christmas village was supposed to be on the table where the tree is.  Unfortunately I can't find my grandma's Christmas village anywhere.  I'm not happy about it, not at all.  This will probably forever be known as the year I lost the Christmas village.  Just like we had that one year when Eric broke a house in the Christmas village.  Things like that never go away.

This is my favorite piece of furniture in the whole house.  I found it last year at an estate sale and snapped it up for 50 bucks.  The nativity set on the left has lost a few of it's residents.  The one on the right is constantly being rearranged (as it's meant to be).  There are 6 stray wise men mixed in from lost/broken sets and one small set Eric gave me last year.  I need more.

The other living room, aka the TV room, aka the family room.  I didn't intend to, but I have a goodly stocking collection forming.  We won't fill them all, but in the meantime aren't they cute!

The Christmas tree lives in the family room, opposite the stove.  Every year we let the kids pick one ornament to add and eventually when they start a home of their own, their collection will go with them.  This leads to an odd assortment of ornaments: John Deere tractors, Buzz Lightyear, Elmo, Harry Potter...but it does give a good snapshot of what they are thinking about that year.  This year Josh chose a glass pagoda and Carly went for a purple star dealy thing.  We also put a picture of the kids from each year on the tree.  I love seeing how much they have changed.  Eventually I'll have a small tree dedicated to just the pictures.

This is our picture wall, it connects the dining room and family room.  Up above is our collection of colored glass, some from Eric's mom, some from my great aunt, some I have added.  The pictures are mostly static, but I choose a few to rotate out and add a seasonal decoration.  We have a Christmas plate that was a gift when Josh was small, a ceramic Santa from Eric's mom, and a hand-painted Christmas sign one of our good family friends made.  You can also see the wreath I made about 10 years ago hanging on the coat closet door.  It's gettin' kinda ragged so I think it might be retired after this year.

Ye Olde Snowman Gang, hanging out on the kitchen window frame:

The dining room, in case you couldn't tell.  The light fixture is hung in the oddest place and will someday be replaced because I can't quite get the table centered under it and it drives me C R A Z Y.

Not a decoration, but aren't those chubby cheeks delish? 

Thanks for stopping by!