Our big project this weekend was putting up the Christmas decorations. Prior to having Lucy, I would say this took me about three or four hours to complete. On Saturday I spent a solid ten hours doing it. Nothing goes quickly with a curious toddler in the house!
Here’s a picture of our family room. I chose to do this one first so I could address the elephant in the room right away and get it over with: No, we do not have an actual life-sized Christmas tree this year . . . and it’s killing me! It’s not because of Lucy; it’s because of our two darn dogs!
So you may remember from last year’s Christmas post that I wasn’t happy with our current tree because it was pretty sparse looking and half the lights didn’t work. To ensure we could get a new one this year, I made Matty throw it out after Christmas last year. Well something has happened to our old dogs over the past year. They’ve always had a bit of separation anxiety, but it seems to have escalated over the last year. They get into rooms and destroy things if we don’t lock the bedroom doors when we leave, we can’t leave Lucy’s toys out anywhere when we’re gone. It’s getting pretty darn annoying. So I knew that if they destroyed the BEAUTIFUL $250 tree we wanted to buy from Hobby Lobby I wouldn’t be able to forgive them . . . or myself for being dumb enough to trust them with an expensive tree. So, we decided to do a tabletop tree, and we also bought that crazy lighted tree on the left and hung ornaments from it. It’s no beautiful, tall Christmas tree, but I don’t hate it as much as I had anticipated. And Lucy gets super excited about both trees, so that’s a bonus! Also, I wish I had turned off the TV! We weren’t even watching it, and I have no clue what was on.
A close up of our new table top tree. Is there a chance that our dogs might climb up onto the love seat and get at it? Yes. But we’ll only have wasted $30 instead of $250!
Lucy sits in her chair and looks up at the ornaments and squeals, “Ball!” Then she’ll turn and look at us and wag her finger back and forth and say, “No no no.” #quicklearner Also, in case anyone is interested in replicating our amazing faux tree, we purchased it at Hobby Lobby.
The Santa pillow and Christmas throw are new additions from Kohl’s this year, and I love them both!
Our nativity scene along with a few of our special ornaments. I’m no dummy, I don’t put them where the dogs might get them!
Our 2016 family ornament! The daddy snowman actually has “Dadu” written on it. That’s the only name Lucy has for her daddy. But now I’m wondering if I should have spelled it “Dadoo.” You get the idea, though.
Lucy gets her own special ornament each year. They didn’t have any giraffes, but she’s been into owls a lot as well so I thought this was a good choice.
I love gingerbread people, so that’s the theme in our kitchen. (That felt Christmas tree on the side of the pantry will be getting its own blog post on Tuesday.)
This giant gingerbread tea cup adds a little festive touch to the coffee pot area.
We had a random bottle of red wine open on our counter from a crockpot recipe I made last week. I didn’t give it a second thought until I saw a display of wine bottle Christmas clothes at Kohls. I couldn’t pass up this $5 Christmas tree outfit! #cheapwinejustgotfancy
Here’s a close up of the little office space on the right side of our kitchen. I picked up both signs at Hobby Lobby this year. I spent more time than I care to admit working on fun lettering for the “Milk & Cookies” menu and then finally gave up and used my regular writing. The gingerbread man’s tummy is filled with dark chocolate Hershey Kisses, which will hopefully last long enough to make cookies for Christmas Eve. We shall see.
We just add a few festive touches in our dining room. I hang all of our Christmas cards on the waterfall wall, so this room looks better and better as the month of December progresses!
My simple centerpiece. This picture has helped me to see that I definitely need to iron the runner!
One of my favorite decorations is our chandelier at the front door.
Here’s a picture with the lights off so you can see the decorations a little better. Mistletoe at the front door is a great idea!
Of course, I had to add some decorations to Lucy’s room too! I bought her this gingerbread girl from Hobby Lobby last year. When I brought it up from the basement this weekend, Lucy was super excited to see her and carried her around the house. She’s also taller than the gingerbread girl this year!
I bought this sparkly red basket from Hobby Lobby (are you seeing a theme here??) to keep her Christmas books in.
She loves this Minnie Mouse stocking on her changing table. I’ll give you two guesses as to where I bought it, but you’ll only need one.
This little blanket and adorable pillows are from Target. Lucy tends to refer to any male figure as Dadu lately. Sunday morning she stood up in her crib and started calling for Dadu. Matty went in to get her, and when he opened the door she immediately started pointing to the pillow and said “Dadu!” hahaha
A cute little gingerbread girl on top of her toy shelf.
So that’s our house! The outside is still in Thanksgiving mode with our fall wreath, mums, and pumpkins. Matty will switch all of that over to Christmas on Friday. Will Christmas lights actually go up on the house, though? Only time (or me) will tell. It takes Matty all day to do it, and lately I’ve not really been interested in sacrificing an entire weekend day of help with Lucy just to get the lights up.
In other Christmas news, we were at Trader Joe’s the other day and they were giving away samples of these gingerbread oat bars. Lucy gobbled up two of the samples, so I bought a box to bring home. She’s had two of them as a treat and always asks for more. If gingerbread is your thing, then you might want to give these a try.
Lucy was so focused on gobbling up her gingerbread bar that she couldn’t even take a second to look at me!
Have a great week preparing for Thanksgiving. Leave the turkey, give me the sides. That’s my motto. I’m in charge of the homemade stuffing and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie this year!
XOXO
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