Oh Christmas Tree

Oh my goodness.  I had half a post written and I really was going to publish it but then I had a surprise party for Mr. C. that sucked up about a month of my time, and then I was in Christmas decorating mode, and then Thanksgiving happened (yes, this is in chronological order and Christmas decorating did occur before Thanksgiving for this year only), and then I geared up for the magicalness of Black Friday, and then I took a weekend to finally clean the house and relax a bit and now here we are and you never got to read the post.  But, I wrote you a new one with Christmasy stuff so you really aren't missing out on anything.

We took advantage of my parents being in town in November and recruited them for some Christmas decorating help.  My dad and Mr. C did the outside of the house with some little lights on the trees and the big ceramic bulbs around the roofline.  it makes me so happy when I get home!  My mom and I did a lot of the inside of the house and it was so nice to decorate with her again.  I was ready to change things up a little bit this year and it was very helpful to have another decorator to try things out I hadn't thought of.  My parents had never been in town when our Christmas stuff was up so it was really nice to be able to enjoy the decorations together for a couple days.

Oh pretty Christmas tree, how we love you!  We have a very large 9 ft. tree which Oreo has claimed as his own.  He also thinks the ornaments are strategically placed toys for him.  He's finally stopped batting at ornaments so much because he's moved onto chewing on my pretty wrapping paper.  Whose idea was it to get a cat anyhow???  Oh that's right....it was mine.  And if you're wondering why we don't put the presents under the tree like normal people, it's because Oreo is training us to do what he wants and apparently it's working.

Above the TV stand is some garland and our nutcracker collection.  We bought our first one when we went to the Nutcracker ballet and it's been a tradition since.  I love how unique they all are and for some reason they don't creep me out the way some nutcrackers do.

I did a little more decorating in our bedroom this year.  I added an extra mistletoe ball over the bed and wove some garland into the headboard.  We switched out our bright pillows and white duvet cover for the thicker, green duvet we use for the winter, and I'm really love looking at the bed all made up now with the decorations.  I also hung the "Merry Christmas" garland I made last year for our photos over the bed.

The tree in our bedroom is much smaller than our main one, but I love it because it holds most of our special ornaments.  Every year I usually get at least one ornament that represents something that happened that year. I love putting the ornaments on this tree because it brings back memories and each one really is so special to me.

I decided to make a new table centerpiece this year and made this for under $15!  

The ornaments in the middle came from Target's $1 section.  I already had the glass containers from our wedding centerpieces.  I found the greenery at Michaels for $1.99 and the snowflake ornaments were .50 each.  I cut off the thin hangers on the snowflakes and used ribbon to make them various heights.  It ties in perfectly with the colors on our tree too which I’m pretty darn excited about.

I hope you have your decorations up and are ready for Christmas!