🎜Oh there's no place like home for the holidays🎝
{Especially in 2020, because that's where just about everyone was!}
I enjoy decorating for all holidays, but Christmas is my favorite and the grand finale. It takes hours of time to transform the house into a Christmas house, but it's worth the effort. (My attitude might be different from that the day that I'm setting it all up and the day that I'm putting it all away. 😂) I especially appreciated Christmas decorations and festivity this year because of what a hard year it had been. So, here is our holiday house--because we were definitely home for Christmas, and it wasn't in our dreams. Ha ha!
Our first artificial tree turned out well. It was the perfect height and it had a great shape and it looked realistic. I didn't really like the bottom of it and am hoping that it will "fluff out" more in the future. I did the lights myself and it was a pain. It was a colored lights year and I used what we had and half of them were burnt out, and then I found out that the lights that I strung around the top half of the tree were blinking lights, which are not my favorite, but hey, it was done, and it was festive and pretty.
I love my collection of nativities.
I happened to take this picture when the afternoon light in the dining room was at its peak. 😍
I don't need to buy many holiday decorations anymore, but I couldn't resist this pretty indoor owl wreath. I'm keeping it up all winter because I like it so much.
The Lenox Victorian ladies are another personal favorite.
I took pictures of every decoration to put in my holiday decoration photo file that I use to help me remember where to put everything. I won't include them all in this post, but here are many of them.
I really like our Christmas reading materials. This year (or last year, rather) I took more time to read from them each day, and I updated the big 24 Days of Christmas binder that my mom gave to me years ago. It really added to the spirit and the peace of the season for me.
The Christmas book basket. Sam and I read a different book together most days in December. I'm so glad we made time to do this!
The boys have been doing this Fisher-Price Nativity advent calendar ever since John was a toddler. And they still do it! So precious!
This cardinal with mistletoe has been in my family since I was a little girl. It still gets wrapped up in the same newspaper from 1986!
Family room end tables
The porcelain Victorian village is another hand-me-down from my mom. 😊
I wrap garland around the back stairwell railings. In the future I'd like to do it on the front stairwell too.
Basket of Christmas movies, many of which we watched this year.
Putting this post together has made me feel super-nostalgic for Christmas! I already missed it anyway, but I miss it even more now. Especially with everything that's happening right now. I hope this year goes by fast and that Christmas will be here again before we know it! 🤞🎄🎅
