This past week, my crafty side went into full gear and I got our house at least a little Christmas-fied. Honestly, I was so exhausted (the good kind) after hosting my family for a week at Thanksgiving that I’m surprised I got anything up at all! Add onto that the fact that we fly to CA in 8 more days for the holidays, and we didn’t really see much point in decorating TOO much.
Of course, my home-made $5 burlap flower wreath switched out her fall leaves for pinecones and live branches that I collected for free from Home Depot’s Christmas Tree tent (seriously, they have enough scraps to decorate a whole house!).
And I’m so glad that we did a tree. The boys waited anxiously all day for Jesse to get home from work so that they could decorate it with him. We put on Christmas music, ate candy canes, pulled out our family decorations that somehow made it from CA, and laughed as AJ started hiding the ornaments in various places. They loved every second of it, and they love having it in our living room! We’ve even caught AJ singing to it from time to time 🙂
Yes, the tree is actually in our dining room. But where is the dining room table, you might ask? More on that later. In an effort to finally feel comfortable in our townhouse (sigh, it’s been a process), we basically rearranged almost everything last week. Don’t worry, pictures have been taken and the tours are coming shortly!
Okay, I guess a sneak peek of where the dining room table is now won’t hurt, seeing as I have my $20 DIY Christmas chalkboard up above it (tutorial soon!). We moved the table into the kitchen nook, where my office used to be.
And here is our rustic chic entryway, with a few Christmas updates.
I made an advent calendar last year, but I have too many memories of our foster boys tied up with them, and decided I didn’t want to get sad and miss them every time I enter the living room, so we did this last minute instead 🙂
Since we don’t have a fireplace anymore, I used more scraps from Home Depot to make a hangar for our stockings. Gregory and I printed off letters, cut them out and then traced them against sparkly card stock from Hobby Lobby to make the letters. Two of the stockings I bought a few years ago at the $ Store, and two of them are from Hobby Lobby (seriously, they have such good sales!).
And, speaking of Hobby Lobby, I spent $4 making this cute centerpiece for our dining room table. We found the little box for $3 (right around the time when Gregory told me I should just live at Hobby Lobby because I love it and he’ll just find a new mom!), filled it with more tree scraps, and added my mason jars with sugar on the base and flameless tea light candles on top. You can’t see, but I also tossed a couple pearls around on the sugar to make things sparkle.
I will leave you with an absolutely adorable video of AJ singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to our tree 🙂
 Christmas Decorations |
 Fantastic Coupon for Christmas Cards! |
 $5 Burlap Door Wreath |
 Happenings Around Here |
That video of AJ singing to the tree is PRECIOUS!!! Oh my goodness, by far the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Simply sweet, pure magic.
Thanks, Seana! We thought the same thing and video taped it holding our breaths (mostly hoping that older brother wouldn’t jump in and try to steal the show!).