Ahhhh, I just love Christmas time. It is a holiday season that suits me just fine. I love that I am still able to feel all the emotions I did as a child during this time. My heart gets all aglow when I see Christmas lights, hear carolers or walk past a nativity scene. My eyes get teary-eyed when I hear O'Holy Night and I can't get through a Christmas service without balling my eyes out. I just love everything about Christmas an what it represents...and yes, the Ol' Saint Nick stuff is kind of fun, too.
So we have spent the last week deckin' the halls in our house. We have recently sold this house, in fact. Decorating is very bittersweet for me as I remember the first Christmas in this home and the first one of my toddler. We will also share a first Christmas with our youngest this year in this house before we move. Our house only sold a little more than a week ago and I had been anxiously waiting to put up our decorations. If your house has ever been on the market, you know how it goes--space is everything so we couldn't clutter the house with unnecessaries like a Christmas tree. However, as soon as that sold sign was put up, I was headed towards our garage to dig out all the festive decor.
I migrated to Australia about five years ago and I am still working on building back up our Christmas decorations. Except for a few childhood ornaments, everything we owned was sold at a garage sale before the big move. Since my toddler was born, I've been greatly inspired by his Steiner playgroup so I've been trying to make a lot of handmade decorations, at that takes time. A LOT of TIME when you are a mommy. It seems like the majority of my craft profects stay in my head or as a pin on Pinterest!
This is not a bad thing at the moment since we are trying to dwindle the amount of things that we move to the new place. As I don't want to accumulate more things, I've been more creative and resourceful about the decorations this year; trying to use things that I have on hand already. My brain has been turning planning my Christmas table decor and centerpiece. I can't wait to share the finished project with you, which I'll be starting on tonight. It involves tree branches and spray paint. Fun, fun!
So here are some of our Christmas favourites around our house. Again, being resourceful with what I already have on hand. You can really get festive for next to nothing if you are creative!
The theme in my lounge room is blue and green; cool colours. I have vintage style bird flower boxes that I decide to use to my advantage. I plopped a gold Christmas tree I had on hand from lat year into the center and filled the other boxes up with gold baubles from K-Mart, which was $3.00 for a pack. I am pretty into making things monochromatic most of the time so I stuck with just gold. I like the simple statement of one them colour and it really makes the blue and little birds pop out more; instead of a bunch of colours and everything seems to get lost.
Another thing that I just LOVE to do is steal some 'subway art' from other fellow bloggers. I am just not nearly as creative on the computer as the many wonderful people out there so I love to find a good, free printable subway sign. I have a frame that I picked up at a dollar shop and I change it out with subway art for each holiday season. You can catch a glimpse of the Halloween one in the last blog entry. This one I grabbed from Smile Like You Mean It . I have it set up in a corner on one of my kitchen counter tops. I spend most of my time in the kitchen, which is truly the heart our our home so I like to have it there so I can always catch a glimpse of it to keep me in a festive mood. IT WORKS! I swear every time I look at it, I can't help but to start breakin' out with Deck the Halls!
One thing that all the children love (and I catch adults playing with them, too) are these little jumping figures. I have a reindeer and a nutcracker. I hanf them on hooks at my toddler's level so he can play with it whenever he wants. They are just so cute when they do the splits in the air and my little baby girl smiles everytime!
How do you count down the days until Christmas? We have this lovely handmade advent calendar that I picked up last year at Oxfam. BTW...I just LOVE, LOVE to shop at the Oxfam Shop and do most all my gift shopping there. It is Fairtrade and it feels so good to know that your purchase is going towards a sustainable furture for another community. The stuff is beautiful and good quaity. Check them out! It is a tradition that for Christmas and my son's birthday that we go there and buy an 'Unwrapped Gift' card that buys something for another person, such as a well for a community or a heifer for a family, etc. It is a beautiful thing and teaches him about giving to others in need.
Anyhoo, I found this advent calendar after Christmas time last year. It was on sale so I picked it up and it went straight into the Christmas storage box. I was excited to pull it out this year and my son has been stalking it to see when I'll put a treat inside (I have to put one in on each day, otherwise he is too tempted it eat them all!) As a healthy alternative, I choose to put in a piece of dried fruit for him.
So there is a little tiny glimpse of some of the things hung up in our house. What about yours? Later I'll post the adventures we had making chocolate covered pretzels today for some reindeer cookies. Yum! But now I have a can of paint waiting for me!
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