Category Archives: Holidays

Christmas Lights 2010

Posted by: Maggie

My very favorite Christmas activity is driving to look at Christmas lights! Last Saturday night we went out to dinner (a very rare treat) and then went to see the lights on some of the best streets in our part of town.

We, of course had to pick up some cocoa for Eleanor and a gingerbread latte for Josh and me!

(photo via Josh’s iPhone)

And we put some Christmas music on the stereo!

I was thrilled that it was pouring out that night! There is nothing prettier than Christmas lights in the rain!

Yay for Christmas!

House Tour: Holiday Decor 2010

Posted by: Maggie

I think I did a pretty fabulous job decorating this year! I am so proud of myself!

This year’s theme is an Elegant Wooded Christmas. Is it weird to theme my Christmas decor? Well, how else do you decorate? I loved last year’s woodsy theme, so I wanted to use it again. But I also wanted to add a bit of sparkle and shine and use my new favorite color, royal purple, with some gold and silver. I’m so fancy!

Our trimmed tree:

I used only about a tenth of my ornaments. I have amassed quite a collection. So I pick out just the ones that work with my theme and color scheme.

This year the woodland creatures, purple, gold and silver ornaments went up.

I found this great bag of mini pinecones with a few painted gold! Perfect!

I picked up the sparkly snowflake candle holders on sale at Michaels, about a dollar a piece. I also got these poinsettias there.  Although I’m not usually a fan of artificial plants, I got these ones so I’d have them for another year. I also loved the gold sparkly stamens on the mini ones. I added the purple ribbon bands to tie them in with some of my other decor.

I had planned to make a mistletoe kissing ball. I had the instructions and a list of what I would need, but I couldn’t find the mistletoe, real or artificial. So I scrapped my plans when I found this artificial one at Michaels. All I did was replace the ribbon with my purple ribbon! That saved time!

I’m not crazy about this garland. It’s okay, but doesn’t look real enough for my tastes. It was just the best I could find for a reasonable price. The good looking stuff was about $30 a string, which is just way more than I would want to spend on one piece of decor. I made these Pinecone Rosettes with instructions from Martha. I didn’t buy quite enough pinecones so mine are a little smaller and less full than hers. But I still think they turned out pretty great.

I got the idea for this grape vine wreath chandelier from another Martha craft.  I wanted to do something similar with wreaths and ribbon, but I wanted something that would cover the length of our table and could use the lighting track to hang it easily.

I found these grape vine wreaths at Michaels, tied long lengths of ribbon to them, then tied the ribbon bows and sewed them with translucent thread to the ribbon used to hang them! I love how they turned out, and they doubled as cute decorations for Eleanor’s birthday party.

We live in an apartment with a small patio with one rail, so our outside decorations are pretty simple, just these lights strung on the rail, some lights around our small front window and the holly berry wreath on the front door.

Doesn’t it just feel like Christmas?! So cozy!

Oh Christmas Tree!

Posted by: Maggie

The evening of the day after Thanksgiving we headed out to get our tree. I had spent the day planning our holiday decor for this year. I pulled out what we had, determined what we still needed, and made my craft store shopping list. We were ready for the tree so we went to our usual lot only to find that it was not open yet! So sad! So we decided to give another local lot a try.

We picked out a beautiful strong, tall tree this year. It reminds me of Josh. (Last year’s tree was more like me: short and round).

The trimmed tree and the rest of our decor is coming soon!