I've been collecting Christmas decorations since Justin and I got married 3 years ago and all they've really decorated were the inside of boxes in our storage! I bought everything after Christmas, and immediately put it away, so most of it I had completely forgotten about! This year I was more than happy to pull out my decorations and did so the week before Thanksgiving! We had about 15 guests in our home for the holiday and I wanted everyone to feel festive and cozy!
Allison sent me a link to a blog home tour and I was so inspired to share with y'all! I so loved getting to decorate for the first time ever, that I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do!
First let's start with the mantle and all the little decorated areas of the house and then we'll move on to the trees!
The stockings were hung by the chimney that's closed off... but still! I definitely would have liked to have done more here, and I probably will next year, but I have a strict rule about buying decorations AFTER the season when you can get them for the best price. I do like the festive touches that brought our mantle up to season. I like the glitter pine cones in the pink stems so much that they might just stay year round. Is that ok?
This is our entry way table with glitter tree that I've put our cards on. I took this picture a while back, so there are a few more that haven't made it on the tree yet! Can't wait until it's full of friendly faces! I filled my milk glass bowls with black, gold & silver ornaments and a Merry Christmas sign!
I snatched these gold candle sticks from my Gram's house a few visits ago. My mom hated them, but I just love them at the opening of my dining room and living room! These glitter pine cones and tiny birds have found their perfect home in the rim.
Funny story about this tree topper. I snagged in on sale last year and never actually put it on a tree! This year when I was decorating it wouldn't stay on top of either of my trees! Can't figure out why they would make a tree topper that wouldn't top a tree, but I digress. So, during the process of decorating this topper moved from room to room, but finally found it's home on the coffee table amongst the mercury glass, feathers and magazines! Now I think it looks like it always belonged there!
This was another thrown together hodgepodge that I thought turned out so nicely! This is on the side table of the couch. It's a gold and silver garland that I fastened together, threw some cream fabric in the middle and added some mercury glass. Like the previous topper, I was hoping to put this one on my gold tree, but it was too tall and too scary for hard wood floors. (Side Note: I've never dropped so many things in my life as I have on my hard wood floors! I am getting to a point that I need to buy extra of everything because I am bound to drop one and break it!)
On to the dining room. This is our green hutch and I thought this would be the perfect place to display the only red and green decorations that I have in the entire house! Can you imagine Christmas without red & green? Come visit my house and I'll make it easy for you. One of my Christmas trees is gold & one is black... I don't even have green trees here!
I picked up some of these Santa mugs last year at Justin's grandmother's antique store and picked up more of them and the jug from my gram! Gram's have little green rhinestone eyes. They fit in perfect with all the glitter and sparkle around here!
I love glass ball wreaths, but forgot to buy balls last year so I could make my own! I ended up going to a thrift store here and finding bags of glass balls for right around $8 total. Add that to the $1 I spent on tinsel and I have a fab new glass ball wreath for less than $10. If you look at this one up close, you can see how old and eclectic all the balls are and that makes me very happy! You'll see this one again in our Christmas picture!
Here is the "Diva" Tree! This was a green tree that I got last year and spray painted black. It was $40 cheaper to buy it green and buy the paint to make it black rather than just buying a black tree! It's a 6ft tree and I love how the mesh netting and over sized ornaments turned out! Wouldn't this be perfect in a sassy little girl's room? For now it's just perfect for our master bedroom where the colors are mostly black, white and pink.
This is the gold tree that's in the living room. I die a little inside every time I see the red wrapping paper, but I didn't wrap those presents, and I felt a little wasteful to unwrap them all and re-wrap in my paper, so you must forgive just like me. It's really hard to get the full effect of the gold tree without it looking white, and if I could invite each of you over for hot chocolate you could see all it's vintage glory with your very own eyes.
Here's the entire room lit up at night so you can get a better picture. I keep wanting to apologize for the quality of the pictures, but really, I'm not a photographer with a fancy camera, so this is a good as it gets and it could be a lot worse, right?
Family pictures inside the cottage.
Family pictures outside the cottage. It was actually snowing outside when we took this. Thanks for indulging me and looking at my house! From our house to yours... Merry Christmas!
