Other Parts of our Home Decorated for Christmas

We didn't spend a whole lot of time decorating all of our home for Christmas. Mainly, the downstairs has the most Christmas decor, but we did manage to add a little Christmas cheer to other parts of our home (like our girls' room and our master bedroom). Since we used decorations that we already owned from previous years, it helped keep things simple, but still gave us that Christmas feeling throughout the home.

In our girls' room, I hung up some "stockings" that I bought a year or so ago. They are one of those accidental happenings because I originally purchased them to wear under my boots, but I never actually did wear them anywhere because they were a little too tight near my knees. ;) 
Anyways, I needed to find some kind of use for them so I hung them up on the girls' closet doors. I think they look pretty cute up there.

The pre-lit Christmas tree we found in the attic about 2 years ago when we moved here. It was already decorated with pink accents, so it fits perfectly in the girls' room.  
And if you can, ignore the mess in the dolls house. My girls still love to play with it, but that means that the dolls who live their along with their furniture get knocked down repeatedly moved all over the place.

The smaller Christmas trees you see on the nightstand and the bookshelf were purchased at the Dollar Tree. The girls had fun decorating those this year. 
I remember when my sister and I were little, we each had one of those trees, and every year it was so fun to decorate. I figured I could pass along that tradition to my girls! 

I bought these little sparkly red stockings at Party City. They came in a pack of 30 I believe, for about $5.00.  I placed some of them on the doors in our home and the other 24 are hanging up in our kitchen window.

Our room was kept pretty simple, as you can see. I just placed some of our Gator ornaments in here (Go Gators!) and hung our stockings up.

Oh, and yes, that is my middle child sitting in her brother's high chair. She wanted to eat her snack there and so I thought, why not?! She is such a goofball!!

A Few Wonderful Celebrations

Not too long ago, our oldest entered a drawing competition at her elementary school. It was one of those things that I thought, why not tell her about it and see if she wants to enter. She, of course, quickly said "Yes"! We had a few guidelines to follow along with creating a title for her art work- she affectionately named her drawing, "Rainbow Beauty." (picked from a few other titles she came up with). She loves rainbows and color, so she made sure her drawing had a rainbow with lots of color. 

  

Anyways, after a few months, we found out she won first place in her category! Her drawing was advanced to the County where she placed second. We have no idea how many students were competing in the whole county, but I think there are 11 schools in our area. Regardless, we were super proud of her for her efforts and willingness to give this a try. And she was very happy to find out she won first at her school! Who wouldn't be proud of that?! ;)

Our daughter absolutely loves to draw, color, and create things. So when we found out that her school was doing a competition where students could show off their creativity, we were very excited about it and, of course, very, very thankful for the opportunity! 

Another wonderful thing we were able to celebrate a few days ago was my husbands birthday. :)

The kids got to create a card for him- filled with lots of glue and markers. We also made some yummy brownies with home made icing! Since he is a lover of coffee, we got him a new coffee brewer too- it was a little bit of an upgrade from our previous $10 one that was good to us. ;)

Here it is in use early in the morning. ;)

I am very thankful for the man I have married. He is patient and kind and always encouraging! So grateful to have these memories to share with one another!

Living Room for Christmas

I finally got around to photographing our living room for the holidays. 
I mentioned in my last post that we are using decor from previous years, and because of that, the living room decor was kept simple. I really think that's how we like things during this time of year. Things can get pretty busy during the holidays, and when you don't have all that much time to put into decorating (like us) it helps us feel like we aren't overdoing things!

The tree was nicely decorated by our girls and their Mema this year. We love that our Christmas tree has many years of memories on it- including some hand-made things I made when I was about the same age as my daughters. :) It's fun to see the kids ask about a few of those ornaments on the tree.

The turkey was made by my oldest and the Christmas tree I made when I was in kindergarten.

I also added this green rug to the couch. It's a pretty thin rug and after moving it around to a few spots in the house, it's finally settled back into the living room (where it was originally). Except this time, I placed it on the couch, because, why not?! ;)

Below is a view of our banister decorated with some garland I have used in the past and some pine cones my girls and I found around our neighborhood.

Both of our girls made a star ornament (one at church and the other at school) and I love how they added it to the top of our tree. It makes it more personal and it's something I hope we have for many years to come!

I still have a few other spots to photograph (like the girls room and our bedroom), so once those are done, I will post them as well. I really like this time of year- our house feels so cozy and warm with all the Christmas decor and the lights!

Do you enjoy decorating your space for the season?