Christmas Decor in Our Home

Christmas. 
It's one of those holidays that holds a special meaning for my family and I (and of course, our church community). For us, it's about celebrating the birth of our Savior and making sure we teach that to our kids. It's easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle of this time of year with family events, presents, food, and decorating that we forget what the holiday is actually about. That's not to say that you shouldn't decorate or put up a Christmas tree. In fact, this post will have plenty of pictures of Christmas decor in our home. It's fun to celebrate this month with our creativity and knowing that it's something God has generously given us another year to do together. 
So with that, here are some photos of our home decorated for this holiday.

We'll begin downstairs with our kitchen.

We kept it simple in here by hanging stockings and plastic ornament reindeer from the cabinets.

We also added this faux wreath to our closet door. I love this wood door (and so does my husband) so it will probably never get painted. :)

Next up we have our dining room- a space that has truly become one of my favorite spots in the house.

 

The B/W photo above our buffet table has had this garland with the painted pine cones around it since last Christmas. I never bothered to take it down and just changed out the lights when necessary. 

I added some ornaments and pine cones to the wooden centerpiece. Something simple that adds a nice holiday touch.

Our entryway is a favorite to decorate this time of year because of the staircase. I finally bought real garland this year (on sale at Home Depot right now) and I love it! Not only does it smell nice, it also looks beautiful.

After reading many blogs over the years, I noticed that bloggers, around Christmastime, like to use wreaths over rectangular mirrors. I guess it helps break up the box-iness of a room. Anyhow, I like how it looked in other peoples home so we tried it here. It works!

This is the space where we put our Christmas tree. It's a bit small so I'm thinking of adding a basket underneath to hide the pole that the tree is standing on a bit better. :)

We also added these paper mache houses that the girls and I worked on together. I really love how they look on top of this dresser. Definitely a fun project to try with little ones at home.

We hung up more stockings by the french doors. Bought those at Party City for a good deal a few years ago.

That's all for the tour. I hope to have some photos ready of the kids' rooms sometime soon since we did a bit of decorating there too.

Happy December!! 

Fairy Canopy Fit for a Princess (or two)

My oldest daughter has been asking us for a fairy/princess canopy to have over her bed for about 6 months. Whenever she would see one in a magazine or in a movie (the most recent being The Tale of Despereaux) she'd say, "Mommy, can I have one of those?" I would think about it a little bit and say, "Maybe for Christmas sweetie." And I was going to leave it at that until 2 things happened: 

1. When I looked up the cost of one of these canopies, I was a bit surprised at the cost. They run about $99 per. I didn't really like that and knew there had to be a way to make one for much, much cheaper. 

2. We were visiting with a neighbor and while the kids were playing I mentioned to my friend that I had been thinking about making a hanging canopy for my girls room. Our conversation went a little something like this afterwards:
Neighbor: "What color fabric are you thinking about using for the canopies?" 
Me: "Not really sure, but probably a sheer white fabric."
Neighbor: "The people that lived here before us left some sheer curtains in white and green. I don't want them but do you want to take a look at them to see if it's something you could use?"
Me: "Uhhh, yesssss please!! That would be great!"

My neighbor then took the fabric out of a large garbage bag in her atic where they were stored and showed me this long beautiful green sheer fabric. The previous owners of their house used them as draperies but didn't want them anymore. There were 3 of them so I didn't hesitate to take them. I knew they would work perfectly for the girl's room...and best of all, they were free!!!!

So here is a little breakdown of how I made the canopies.

#1. After searching a couple of stores for those wooden embroidery hoops and seeing that a large size would cost me $19 just for one, I wanted to think of a better/cheaper way to get one. I searched our home and remember we had 2 large unused lampshades in the atic. One was purchased at a thrift store for a couple bucks and had served no purpose because I wanted to use the lamp base, but not the shade itself...that is until now. I cut out the wire circle from both lamp shades and used that as the hoop.

#2: Because I only had 3 long pieces of this fabric, I had to make a couple cuts to make sure each girl got an equal amount of fabric. I also wanted to canopies to have enough fabric to move around and not pulled taut. 

#3. Next up, after adding some twine we had stored in the garage to the hoop, was the take my small but mighty glue gun and attach the fabric.

 #4. I added some eye hooks to the twine and wrapped it tightly so it could hang nicely/safely from the ceiling.

#5. After they were finished and hung, it was time to take pictures and let my girls see their princess canopies. :)

It's safe to say they love them and so do I! They really turned out better than I expected and didn't cost us a dime (unless you count what it would have cost us to buy what we had already...but I didn't, haha).

LOOOOVVVEEEEEEE!!!

And here are some more shots from the other side of their room.

This is the side of their room with the desks my husband helped make. The girls still use them frequently.

The flower hooks we bought at Hobby Lobby- they were 50% off when we got them. Great deal!

I've also seen that you could use hula hoops as well, but since we didn't have one, I had to get creative. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, so if you try it out, let me know how it worked!