Christmas Home Tour

Today I welcome you in for a little Christmas home tour of sorts.  I had a lot of fun this year doing some different handmade projects, keeping it simple and keeping the focus on Jesus.  

The first few photos are from our kitchen, some of my favorite things are my nativity sets I have gotten from the different countries we have visited.  I have also gone crazy with chalkboards and they are everywhere.  But I love that I can customize them for the season.

I made several of these little fabric and ornament garlands to use around the house and help to tie everything together.

Our living room is up next.  We love having a real tree, every year they are a little different and we think this tree might be our favorite.  This year I found some antique bead strands at the Nashville flea market (wow, that place is awesome) and also added some burlap ribbon, its just really soft and pretty.

These rustic wooden stars are one of my most favorite diy Christmas projects I have made.

Thanks for stopping by today and taking a little Christmas tour!

Linking  Up Here

#idhtbptbbchristmas with The Nester

Easy Christmas Decorating (with Kids)

It's December!  Time to decorate.  There are so many awesome bloggers out there who have had their homes beautifully decorated for a month now, giving amazing tips and tricks along the way.  I love those bloggers but I'm not one of them.  I also love Christmas decorating, but nothing comes out until the day after Thanksgiving for us.  So, now I can go crazy, and if you have seen the outside of our house - Justin already has too (think Griswold).

This year we have a 4 year old, and boy is he pumped about Christmas.  So I decided to take advantage of that excitement and plan some easy and fun Christmas activities for us to do together.  We are starting off with a classic, the Christmas Tree paper chain garland.

We gathered our supplies, just the basics and nothing fancy.  Don't worry, I used the scissors.  I used a combo of christmas craft papers and some neutral papers I had.

This was a team effort, Silas tore the perforated piece off of the papers (probably his favorite part of the whole thing) and picked out which ones he wanted as we went.  He also helped with the stapler, emphasis on helped.

In about an hour we had a sweet couple of paper chains, ready for our tree.

I love the handmade addition to our tree this year.  For me, the more handmade things on the tree, the better.  

Sometimes just a simple, classic Christmas project is just what the season orders.  The sweet time with your kid is the best part.  I have some more little projects coming later this week!  Happy Christmas decorating!! 

O Christmas Tree

I love Christmas trees, the smell (if you are a fresh tree kind of person), the lights, the ornaments - it just makes for a cheerful house.  I love getting down the box of ornaments and pulling them out one by one together as a family and connecting them with our memories.  We usually stop at every one and talk about the story behind it. We are sentimental people so we enjoy that sort of thing.  I've never had a themed tree or color schemed tree, it's just a tree of memories every year and we wouldn't have it any other way.

This year's tree was a little different for us seeing that we have a very active and curious little 13 month old running around - we weren't even sure if we could do an actual tree.  But, we worked it out - it's definitely not our best tree and probably not our worst but we were just happy to have something this year.  We kept our tree small and our ornaments minimum to avoid destruction and mayhem and tucked it behind our sofas so it would be out of harms way.  It has worked out great this year, we have lost just a few ornaments to curious hands. So come on a little Christmas tree journey with us...

Our first Christmas together we had zero ornaments and zero money.  These ornaments came in a pack of 3 for $15, and boy we thought that was so expensive and almost felt guilty for buying them - now we laugh and think back to that first Christmas together when we see them.  Such a great memory.

This was my very first ornament for my very first Christmas.  

Little known fact, I love The Wizard of Oz and everything relating to that.  

If you know my husband you know why this is an important ornament.

So that was just a little taste of what our tree is like - Now it's your turn, share with us, do you have any Christmas tree traditions or favorite ornaments?  Do tell.

Have a Christmasy kind of day.