Our "Family Tree"

As I mentioned the other day, I decided to do two trees this year. For my traditional "family" tree, I decorated it with a mixture of ornaments I have collected over the years and my Grandma's antique ornaments. Also, my husband and I buy a Christmas ornament each time we go on vacation. Instead of bringing home a t-shirt or something that will never get used, we buy ornaments that we get to display every year. Plus, it is always fun to pull out the ornaments each year and remember the vacation memories we had from that trip. And, it is fairly inexpensive. Sometimes it is difficult to find Christmas ornaments. We had trouble finding them in Cabo and St. Lucia. But in both places, we ended up finding very cool ornaments at little shops at the airport. So don't worry about searching every shop on your trip. The stores at the airport always come through!

I have always wondered what people did with their special ornaments if they only had a theme tree. So tell me, what do you do? And where do you get your favorite ornaments from?

The stockings were hung.....

I don't know about you, but we are ready for Santa. We have our stockings hung on the mantle and are just waiting for the big man to make his arrival!

This was my first year to decorate a mantle, so I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted garland, but after I hung the stockings up, it just looked blah. I added pine cones in a tall vase that I already had on hand and then went to Target (the best store in the world) and picked up two small pre-lit trees. I was planning on doing bows or something to dress up the planter for the tree, but, as you can see in the picture, I just couldn't seem to get it right. Maybe next year.

How do you decorate your fireplace / mantle? Send me a picture, I would love to check it out and maybe borrow some ideas for next year. It's never too early to start thinking about it, especially with with all the great after Christmas sales coming up!

White Christmas Trees

I have been wanting a white Christmas tree for years. For whatever reason, I never actually went out and got one. I guess I was afraid it would look dated and out of place in my house. But this year, I decided I wanted to do a "matchy-matchy" tree and a "family" tree. I was at Target one day and saw a cool fake white tree and just went for it! I debated about decorating it with brightly colored ornaments or green and red ornaments. In the end I went with the brightly colored ones. I am hoping to snag some more ornaments in different shapes during the after Christmas sales for a little more variety. Maybe next year I will do something with garland or ribbons or something. We'll see!

What do you think? Do you have a "theme" tree? And if so, how do you decorate it?

Ornaments in a Jar

I love to find different ways to display some of the beautiful ornaments they have for sale these days. There are so many great color themes out there (red & silver, red & gold, bright colors, silver & gold, etc.), but you can't exactly do every theme on your tree at once. So, I try to do little mini displays using the themes around the house. I saw these ornaments at Home Depot last week and I knew I had to have them. I already had a large jar from the Pottery Barn Outlet and I knew they were look great in it. What do you think? How do you display ornaments at your house?

Christmas Apothecary Jars

I am not sure if this is my final product, but I wanted to share my Christmas Apothecary Jars with you. Let me know what you think. I usually do garland in one of the jars, but I wanted to try something new this year, so I did the bows.

Outdoor Christmas Decorations

I know it's still a little early for outdoor Christmas displays (typically I stick to the after Thanksgiving rule), but I just couldn't wait this year. I showed you earlier this week how I made my wreath and garland and I used to pre-lit trees from Target to finish off the display. The trees came two in a package, so it worked out perfect. I added the bulbs to them so that they would match the other items. I would still like to somehow "dress up" the planters the trees are in, but I am not sure what I want to do yet. Maybe just add ribbons / bows to them? And the doormat is more functional than part of the display.

The garland was too heavy to hang using hooks with just stickies on the back, so my husband drilled holes and attached permanent hooks to the wood surrounding the door. I hate to have to do things like this, but it will make things a lot easier in the future and I will not have to deal with coming home to sections of the garland hanging down.

If you are going to make "ornament garland", like this, I would recommend that you hang the garland first and then attach the ornaments. I am not sure why I did it the other way around, but it resulted in many ornaments falling off when it was being hung and a few shattering on the porch. Don't learn this lesson the hard way like I did!

After I did my project, I was browsing on the Pottery Barn website and saw this! Without even knowing it, I pretty much replicated their design. And for a small fraction of their insane price!

Christmas Garland

In addition to making the bulb ornament wreath, I also made a garland to hang around the doorway. The fall garland I used was pre-made and just needed to be attached. However, I was unable to find any Christmas garland that I liked, so I ended up making my own. I used the five 9ft. strands of pine (fake) garland from Michaels. The strands are very thin, so I elected to double them up. Just like with the leaf wreath, I just attached the bulbs using ornament hangers and made sure to secure them very tightly.

Price breakdown (all items purchased from Michaels):
-Garland: $2.99/strand
-Ornaments: $4.99/box (I used probably six boxes of different sizes ornaments - I am sure I could have found these cheaper somewhere).