Dashing Through the...Christmas Decorations

This is one of my favorite times of year. I love fall, but Christmas time puts a special smile on my face. It's the time of year that I can revert back to acting like a child and not feel one bit guilty. I love gift giving, I love Santa, I love twinkling white Christmas lights and I especially love decorating for Christmas. After Nick and I drove home from Houston on Saturday, he pulled all 11 tubs of Christmas decorations and all of our lights and yard decorations from the attic. We sure have accumulated a LOT of Christmas stuff over the years. Here was a picture of the garage before I started tearing into the boxes.

It took a long time to get all the decorations up and in the process my house looked like a tornado had struck leaving red and green fabric and greenery in it's wake. Here's a quick tour of a few of my house:

Mantel Before I decorated my garland and after:

I have about 4 strands of garland woven together with lights and then I just add in a whole lot of junk I've collected over the years; birds, gold clip on poinsettas ornaments pinecones. I'd really like some feathers on the corners and I'm thinking this year about adding in some berry twigs.

A few up close garland shots:

My Jim Shore figurine collection (love these!)

Homemade art for my plate stand (dollar store frame, scrapbook paper and $1 ornament from Walmart):

Dollar Tree has the GREATEST vase fillers. Most of my vases and containers are filled with their ornaments (6 or 8 for a $1) or these adorable gold bells (9 for $1). I just toss some fake snow or cinnamon sticks in with them and have cute, super cheap decorations.

My new decorations for my entry table. I saw a chalkboard in the Pottery Barn catalog and attempted to copy it. I had an old frame with broken glass, so I removed the glass, sprayed painted the frame Heirloom White (best spray paint white color by far) and sprayed the cardboard with chalkboard paint. I was attempting to spend $0 but I will have to get something other than cardboard soon. It doesn't write very clearly. I changed the layout of the table from the first picture already. I took the board off the wall and stuck some poinsettas in the corner. I put a Christmas quote up and decorated the rest of the table with poinsettas, another homemade piece of art and my jars of Dollar Tree giant peppermint sticks and ribbon peppermint candy.

Here is my art nook (I'm wanting to replace my canvases this year with hand painted art for the holidays...that's my 2010 project). Below is my chest, with my pillow that I got as a present from a friend and our hand painted Christmas boot we got from my aunt and uncle last year. Isn't it cute! Above this is the "Falala" picture from above. It's is a sign I found 80% at Joanns last year and around that are 3 of my Jim Shore angels.

This is our Christmas tree. How beautiful do Christmas trees look when the lights are turned on. This is one of my FAVORITE things during Christmas time...sitting and looking at my tree. I have loved it since I was a little girl. I love to have all my personal ornaments on my tree. Most of my childhood ornaments are still on my mom and dad's tree, but Nick and I have started a small collection of our own. To fill in, I have ornaments that I got on sale at Target 70% the day after Christmas many years ago. That was a fun shopping day with my mom searching for good bargains. I got MANY of my decorations that first year in the house on sale after Christmas, while Nick was still away in Iraq.

My favorite ornaments...

OK...so I love Christmas ornaments. How can you not!

Some other random decorations:

These two snowman banners hang in my entry hall. Another JoAnn's find.

(only 1 pic would load and I'm getting tired after this hour long blog full of pictures...sorry)

And last, but certainly not least my brand spankin' new Countdown to Christmas calendar. I purchased this at a craft fair and spent $50 on it. That is WAY more than I've spent on any other single decoration, but it was too cute to pass up. I can just imagine using this with my own children, letting them countdown the days until Christmas is here. It has a cute item decorated with a number for each of the 25 days until Christmas.

Don't you just love Christmastime!