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My Christmas Home Tour …. of sorts

Close up of Christmas ornaments on the tree

Christmas Home Tour is a bit of an overstatement…..

I didn’t get everything out, only a small portion, but I did get all the boxes out. And they’re still out. Nobody is coming over during the holidays and I’ve been too lazy busy to clean up. So the following pictures are of Christmas vignettes rather than whole rooms. Nobody wants to see the mess that is so carefully cropped out. 🙂

I always do a traditional, colorful, shiny, vintage Christmas. I don’t make effort to color coordinate or create carefully styled mantles, etc. I do it basically like my mother and grandmothers did. Simply find a spot for the ornaments and items we had.

First up, the Christmas tree. It’s basically the same as always. A thousand, or two, tiny, colored lights and a vast collection of vintage ornaments with a few newer ones sprinkled in. 

Traditional vintage style Christmas tree lit at night

I couldn’t decide which picture I liked better, the darker or lighter, so I used both. Didn’t notice the open sheers until later. 

You can’t really see it from those pictures, but there’s a special spot that Dani helped decorate. She actually helped all over the tree, but that spot was hers that she kept going back to. Can you spot it? 

Toddler decorated Christmas tree

Yes, of course I’m leaving it! It makes this year’s tree extra special!

Some close ups of the ornaments:

Close up of vintage ornaments on a traditional Christmas tree

Close up of Christmas ornaments on the tree

The figurals are new, the balls old. The blue and silver one, top right, has a red string on it indicating it’s one I grew up with and is to be especially cherished.

Next up, a small, silver display on the china cabinet/buffet. Super simple.

Silver Christmas vignette

And now, a few small Santas. The rest stayed in their storage box:

Vintage and hand made Santa collection

They stand next to the ceramic Christmas tree collection. 

Ceramic Christmas Tree Collection Display

Display of ceramic Christmas trees

I walked in the room one day when Dani was here and found this:

ceramictrees

I did take the lid off. 

More Santas:

Vintage Santa collection display

Old Christmas paper wrapped boxes

I’m so glad not everyone throws away the fake presents they had. I love vintage wrapping paper and empty boxes wrapped in said paper.

And last – last pictured, but there is actually a little more here and there – is the ball wreath from Anthropologie a few years back:

Christmas ball wreath

 

 

 

 

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Somebody help! It’s almost Christmas!

Rhinestone pin on chippy painted drawer front

Am I the only one having a hard time getting in the mood to decorate for Christmas? I love Christmas! I love to get all the decorations out and place them! I love Christmas decorating! So what’s wrong with me this year? I just plain ol’ don’t wanna bother with it. But Erin came up yesterday and we were going to decorate. I’d gone to her house Saturday and we got one of her trees decorated and she was going to help me get started with decorating the house.

We pulled most of the boxes out and didn’t get much more done than that. Y’all know I’ve never shied away from showing my messes in all their glory, so here’s the Christmas box mess:

This doesn’t include the 4 boxes of tree ornaments and some other boxes that were to high and too wedged for us to get down. Nor does it include the big, gold, aluminum tree or the several small trees. But, as you can see, it does include a chair full of laundry that needs to be taken care of and a stack of Halloween pumpkins in the back of the room (with a box on top of it?). You don’t see the fall wreath, the raincoat, a big stuffed snowman, etc. And please pretend the hideous green chair is really covered in some awesome fabric. It will be. Someday. I just haven’t found it yet.

We did get a couple of little trees decorated, but I didn’t get pictures of them yet. They’re not in place. But this is what little was done.

Bottle brush tree in an aqua canning jar with Epsom salt for snow.

 

I put a couple of trees in blue Ball jars with Epson Salt for the snow. Not sure I like the effect, though. The salt is so white and the tree is so not white.

Put a festive pin on top of a drawer knob. Actually, I did this last week.

And that’s it. What? You expected more? Ha! I guess I’ll be forced to do something now that everything’s drug out, but I don’t wanna!

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Vintage Bottle Brush Tree Forest and Jeweled Trees – Decorating with Vintage Christmas

Lessee. Five more days til Christmas? Hmmm… I’d better hurry up and get all this in. First up, decorating with vintage Christmas, is the small dining room. I’ll explain that. The living room is long enough for a living room and dining room. That room has the big table. The room that’s always been the “dining room” is very small. And it’s between the kitchen and the living room/dining room. So. Here’s the small dining room decked out for Christmas.

Patchwork Quilt Christmas Tree

Vintage Bottle Brush Tree Forest

I pick up bottle brush trees whenever I find them and over the years have accumulated quite the forest. This is the first year I’ve used them like this. It makes me happy when I look at them.

Vintage Quilt Christmas Tree

 

 

As part of my Christmas gift, Melanie used an old quilt I had and made this tree. I absolutely love it!

 

 

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Below is a round table at the end of the sofa in the living room. All out of place because of the Christmas tree that is not in the pictures yet.  This little table got some glitz and glitter. And I’ll tell you a little secret. After I took the picture, I saw that there was a piece of fabric on the floor down the hall. It was edited out. Gotta love those photo editors! The mess may be there in real life, but we can crop or erase a lot of it out of the pictures!

Vintage Glitter and Jeweled Christmas

Vintage Shiny Christmas Ornaments

Vintage Shiny Christmas

 

 

 

Now, here it is five days til Christmas and I still need to buy the two hardest gifts. And I still have no idea what to get. The house is also still not completely decorated and SO not cleaned or even straightened. And there’s cooking that needs to begin. And I need to work at the shop. I need to be here, I need to be there, and I need to be somewhere else and even another place. I need at least three clones! Bet you could use some too!

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25 Days of Christmas – I dropped the ball

Ornament hanging from chandelier

My, my, my. Tsk, tsk. I really dropped the ball on this one, didn’t I? I’d hoped to have enough ahead of time to automate posts while sailing the high seas of the Gulf of Mexico. Ha! Obviously that didn’t happen. Since my return, not much has been done in the way of decorating – or Christmas shopping. I’ve tried, but working during the month of December is for the birds! So I dug up last year’s pictures. Many of you have seen all these, but some haven’t, so here goes.

We’re enjoying my son and daughter-in-law and granddog visiting with us for the week. We don’t get to see them often enough.

My aunt died this week and we spent the day yesterday funeral-ing. It was a one day thing. 10-3. God bless her. She had Alzheimer’s and hadn’t really been with us for awhile now. It was time to let go.

I did my last minute shopping this morning. Everyone else is just getting a check.

We had Ricky’s family over Sunday night. Twenty two adults, three little kids and two babies. Had a ball!

My second Christmas. See Santa? I’ve still got him. See the picture below. He’s beat up now and has a burn mark on his stomach from using too hot a bulb. We just call it heart burn.

Tomorrow is my dad and our extended family. We’re doing Christmas dinner, supper if you’re from the south, at my house. I’m still dragging out decorations, but today I’m at the shop in case there are any last minute shoppers. I’m about to give up hope.

First grade Christmas program.

Merry Christmas all!

Wanda