Now that we have a place we can call our own, it’s time to think about choosing some fitting holiday decorations for our nest. Up until now most of our holiday decorations have been acquired, gifted, and handed down. And while we love many of them and plan to use the special ones for years to come, I think we’d both like to have a few things that we chose together that fit our style and our home and will be special new traditions for us as a family. We don’t have a lot of spare time (and we definitely don’t have a lot of spare money), so these are all little things that would work much better for us than outfitting our entire house with strand upon strand of lights, velvet bows, inflatable reindeer, or Santa door knockers. Most of them are budget friendly to some degree because they can be found inexpensively or even hand made for an extra personal touch! And after all the DIY work we did hand-making nearly everything for our wedding, I’d say we could tackle some of these without a hitch! Let’s get started:
Stockings
Luckily, we already have these! My brother and his family gave us these stockings as a wedding present and we love them! It’s something we have wanted to get for the past two years but never found the time, money, or ones we liked well enough. They are simple, personal, and timeless.
Stocking Holders
I like to keep things elegant. If you attended our wedding you know I like pine cones. And for as much as I hate driving in it and digging my car out from under it, snowflakes are pretty. And they make a lot more sense when you actually live somewhere where it snows. I always thought snowflake decorations in Texas were a little ridiculous.
Wreath
A fresh, full, live wreath! Why get a fake when the real ones smell so wonderful? I’m a fan of using nature whenever we can. And these are just plain gorgeous.
Newlywed Ornament
Our first Christmas together we bought a beautiful ornament to cherish as “our first ornament.” It’s a heavy glass globe blown with blue and white swirls. A little nontraditional for a “first” ornament but perfect for us since we don’t give a lick about fitting into the standard cookie cutter mold of tradition anyway.
There’s no shortage of ornaments out there for any occasion, but finding an adorable newlywed or “our first married Christmas” ornament is harder than you’d think. As with many of our wedding purchases (cake topper, hair accessories, attendant gifts, personalized Thank You cards, succulents for the bouquets, bouquet tag, etc.) I turned to Etsy – the land of handmade, unique goodness – for some inspiration and found these contenders:
Tree Topper
Beautiful, unique tree toppers are another real challenge to find. Seriously. Just do a google shopping search for “Christmas tree topper” and tell me if you’re in love with anything that comes up. No? Yeah, me either. Even my trusty Etsy let me down on this one and that’s pretty unusual. I couldn’t even find a picture I liked well enough to post. That’s pathetic. I think stained glass stars toppers are awesome.
Nativity Set
We would both love a really nice Nativity Set to display in our house around Christmastime to be a constant reminder of, as cliche as the expression is, “the reason for the season.” But like most really nice things, those suckers can get expensive. With so many options and styles out there, this will be one purchase that will require a lot of research and browsing until we find the perfect one for us. A hand carved wood set or even stone is a possibility. We won’t be getting around to it this year, but maybe in a year or two we’ll have found one.
Advent Wreath
My taste in advent wreaths is similar to my taste in door wreaths – live, fresh and uncomplicated. Picture the ones above with the four taper candles in it and maybe a few pine cones for garnish. I don’t think adding berries, bows or ornament balls will make it any more meaningful. This may be another DIY project since most of them nowadays are so decked out that the candles are hardly visible.
In other news, look what arrived yesterday! Can’t wait to break it open and finally have a selection to choose from other than tiny, gigantic, dull, and duller.
Today I’ll be working on a few job applications and unpacking boxes from Texas. Since our new kitchen table, chairs and island cart set is still being stained at the family-run shop we purchased them from, our kitchen is in a state of mild chaos. I’ve mentioned our lack of storage before. We have a spacious kitchen but hardly any storage room. Right now our blender, food processor, slow cooker, corningware set, new pots & pans set, and countless other such items are being stored on the floor in a heaping pile. Needless to say we’ll have to wait until the island cart (with storage!) arrives before I can unpack any more kitchen boxes from Texas. But I’ll unpack what I can for the time being. If I can move quickly enough I’d like to get started on some Christmas shopping too!
Ted is in meetings almost all day today at CCM for various productions. The dance show opens tonight and we have plans to go see it tomorrow evening. He’s been able to come home at a reasonable time for the past few evenings which means taco night, Christmas cookies, and episodes of Hell’s Kitchen :-)
