The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer...

Is singing loud for all to hear!

 

Or...

 

Spending $100 {look away husband!} to send a pretty Christmas card to everyone you love.

 

Christmas cards. There are few things I love more than Christmas cards. When I was growing up my parents sent the kind of Christmas card where they would write a two page letter about every single thing each family member had done that year. My mom would say things like "Camille likes to climb up on the roof and read books. {I did love doing that} She can read an entire Box Car Children book in one sitting!" and I would die of embarrassment. Then they would attach some family photos that they had taken when we were on a hike somewhere. My bangs would be entirely too fluffy or crooked and I would probably be wearing pants that didn't quite reach the tops of my shoes.

 

I have been impatiently waiting to send my own Christmas cards for like..  years. The year we got engaged we didn't send one because our Save the Dates went out in January and it was too close to Christmas to send both. The year we got married our thank you cards went out in November and it was too close again to send a Christmas card. Both of those were covered in engagement photos and wedding photos and we figured that if we sent people one more picture of us they were going to unfriend us forever.

 

Each year our fridge has been covered in other people's Christmas cards. This is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love seeing our friends chubby babies, pets, and smiling faces all December long. I love opening Christmas card mail. So, I was particularly excited knowing that this year was finally my year to send a Christmas card along with everyone else. Or so I thought...

 

{Here is where I'm going to complain.} I don't know if it's because Thanksgiving was a week late, giving us one less week between Holidays for Christmasy types of things {ahem... like sending me my Christmas card} or maybe everyone actually did unfriend us after receiving too many photos in the mail. Either way we have so far received 2 cards this year. Two. One is from our mortgage agent. The other from Nick's dentist. I won't lie, I'm a little sad about it.

 

Either way I am in love with how our {first!!} card turned out and I will hope for more cards next year.

 

Merry almost Christmas friends!!

 

It's Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas! - Holiday Home Tour

I'm linking up with Kelly from Kelly's Korner for one of my favorite posts of the year, the Christmas Tour of Homes! I have always loved Kelly's Home Tours and I'm excited to do mine for the first time this year.

I love our house at Christmas time. I think that it feels so much prettier and so much cheerier with our Christmas decorations up. The paint colors that we chose when we bought the house complement our Christmas decorations so well that it feels like our house is supposed to be filled with Christmas all the time!

Let's do a little home tour shall we?



We will start in the living/dining room. This is the first room that you see when you come in from outside. It's a cozy room that unfortunately we never ever use. I love the couch in this room so much and I think I have only used it maybe twice. Mostly the dogs just sit on it. It's a tragedy.

This coat hook is where Cubby keeps his favorite Santa costume

These photos make our front room look orange. It's red.

Each year we choose a theme to base our decorations on. This year I chose Burlap & Berries. I bought a couple yards of burlap for my tree skirt and some burlap ribbon to make the bows for my tree. {Teddy has already eaten half of them. Please excuse the uneven bow to ball ratio!} They had some berry spray for cheap at Jo-Anne's. I pulled them apart and added the berries to detail my tree and to different accents throughout the house.

We have so much hurricane glass left over from the wedding. I took some of the berry spray and twisted them in the hurricanes and plopped a candle in the middle. Pretty and cheap!

I rescued this cabinet this year from our friend's garage and refinished it by painting it black. It's my new favorite thing to decorate for each holiday. We use it as a liquor cabinet and to display all of the pretty stemware we got for wedding presents.

We've always kept a small tree in our room. I love being snuggled in bed with a Christmas movie on and our pretty little tree all lit up next to it. This year it is doubling as our "fertility tree" my mom gave us the angel that is on the tree with three little babies. She gave these fertility angels to both me and my sister right when we were starting to try to get pregnant. My sister recently gave us the little baby birdie nest. She said to use it to call our little baby home. A positive pregnancy test is #1 on my wish list this Christmas!

One of my favorite parts of our family room is the fire place and mantle. I think it's pretty all year long but I especially love it with our Christmas lights and garland on it. I finally broke down and got our monogrammed stockings from Pottery Barn this year and I love them so much! They are the perfect size for all kinds of goodies and look so pretty on our mantle.

I made this burlap wreath for the front door earlier this year. Since our front door already has a wreath for Christmas, I brought the wreath inside and pulled the monogram off of it and added some berries. I hung it on the mirror at the end of the hallway with a Command hook. I love this wreath.

Here are just a few decorations in the kitchen.

The little Christmas village in the kitchen bay window is the village that I grew up with. My mom never put it up anymore and gave it to us this summer. I used to love setting it up when I was a little kid and playing with all the people. Now it doubles as a cute little light display.

So, there you have it. Our little Christmassy home!

Thanks for visiting!