Holiday Home

It's amazing how warm 40 degrees feels after a few days in the 20s. My hands still get cold in the office, but at least my toes are toasty and our heater at home has regained the ability to warm the living room.

Although it is practically mid-January, I realized on Sunday -- as Jose and I were taking down our Christmas lights, shoving the tree on top of the car to take for recycling, and boxing up the other decorations -- that I never posted any photos of what our house looked like all decked out for its first holiday season! I didn't take many good ones, but I did at least capture the high points:

We started decorating in early December and I already wrote about putting up the outdoor lights (which went up in two sessions because we didn't buy enough the first time) and buying the tree. I also got four electric candles and put one in each of our front windows on a timer. I loved how our house looked at night. So pretty!

I also bought a few oversized ball ornaments and hung them from the two trees in our front yard. (You can see them in the house photo if you look.) I loved how bright and festive they looked in the sunshine.

We had a pretty Christmas wreath on our front door, of course. That's one thing I actually did even when I lived in apartments, so I wasn't about to stop now that I have a house!

It took us a few days, but we finally got all the lights and ornaments on the Christmas tree. We decided that right between the fireplace and the entry hall was the best place for it, even if it meant we couldn't use the fireplace last month. (Christmas tree? Fire hazard? Whatever you say!) We don't have a ton of ornaments, but it still looked pretty good I think!

(Side note: we really need to find an OUT OF THE WAY place to store the Guitar Hero guitars, don't we?)

I did a couple crafty things this year too. I wanted some kind of "our first Christmas" ornament, so I made one from a picture frame ornament I found at Target.

I also spent a month making this Christmas cross stitch to hang on our wall. It's a little old-fashioned, but it reminds me of my mom and grandmother, who both have a number of cross stitch items decorating their walls, and I love it. It came out really well, though it took me longer than I expected, and I finished it right before we left for North Carolina.

I even framed it, so it can hang on the small wall between the dining room and kitchen every year! (I bought a "home sweet home" cross stitch that I've just started to take the place of it for the other 11 months.)

We had a couple other decorations on the tables in our dining room and breakfast room that I didn't get photos of, as well as some cool wall stickers in the entryway. Overall, I loved having our house looking so festive for our first holiday as a married couple and in our new home!