Decking the Halls

Warning to all Scrooges- this is a Christmas post, so if you don't like Christmas trees or Santa Clause or Christmas in general, you might want to leave.

For those that do like Christmas and are interested, here are some pictures of our decked out home. For starters, I have always loved everything about Christmas. I love dragging out all the boxes of Christmas stuff and placing the decorations about and making new things, making food and baking, planning and making presents, listening to Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas music all time and so on. My favorite part of getting ready for Christmas is the Christmas tree. I go all the way, put every ornament we ever had, multi colored lights and twinkling ones at that, and the rainbow tinsel star on top. Hey, Christmas is all about being gaudy,LOL!

Our front door from the inside. I made this wreath five years ago and it's not my favorite, but this year I added some holly leaves and berries to freshen it up a bit. The Santa Clause jingles when you open the door.

Here's some of the decor on the shelves. The Nativity Set was a gift last year and the wooden Santa I bought a few years back. He has a 'twin' with birdhouses on his robe. Love the homespun look!!



And here is the $30 tree from Wal-Mart.
It does have blinking colored lights, but my husband changed the resolution on the camera and I can't figure out how to fix it back. The stuffed animals underneath the tree is a Nativity set the kids play with. Also the snow lady on the far right gets wrapped up in blankets and 'fed' everyday by Sarah.

Next is our fireplace/mantle- finally we have an actual mantle to hang stockings on :)
And here is my 'Swedish Tree'. My husband's family comes from Sweden, or actually now they're saying they moved from Finland to Sweden, then came to America. Anyways, when we go to Michigan (where Dh is from) we go to a store called the Swedish Passport and I bought these little traditional ornaments last year. Sweden's colors are blue and yellow, but it's hard to find those colors for Christmas stuff, so I went with red and white.
The little straw ornaments are the ones from the store. I already had the bows and pinecones, then white balls with red toile print are the ones I made Wednesday.
We spray painted clear glass balls white, then took Aleene's decopauge glue and some toile tissue paper and glued it on the ball. The hard part is cutting out the images, but it's just tedious. I made more than this little tree could hold so I have others on the big tree.

My kitchen was kind of messy when I was taking pictures, so all I have is the window above the sink.
The snowmen collection. I have several more, including a teapot. What's weird is that I never bought any of them- they were all given to me at one time or another, so I have a collection without meaning to.

I know a lot of people don't do Santa Clause, but I found an interesting article about him the other day and plan to put it up soon. We like him and don't see any harm in it.