Christmas decor

Merry Christmas!

I'm posting this a little later in the Christmas season than I had hoped, but I thought I'd share how I decorated this year.  I started a few weeks ago showing you my Christmas printables and then how I made my Joy to the World map, all seen on this wall...

Here is a close up of the Oh Holy Night printable in an Ikea frame.

Oh Holy Night printable - found here

I added an ampersand because those seem to be a bit of trend right now... and I liked it!  I bought a cardboard one from a craft store, painted the edges a mustard/gold color, and modge-podged some paper I had left over to the top.  The picture seen here is one I took on our summer vacation to Colorado in a thrift store frame.

Next, our tree!  We started getting a real tree last year and fell in love.  The only pics of the whole tree I have were taken with my phone:

 You may notice in this picture the mantle decor started different.. that's real garland but it turns out its not a good idea for real garland to be right above a frequently used fireplace.  The garland started drying out and turning brown in the hottest places, so it got bumped to outside.

Our ceilings are also very high in the living room so we have room for a tall tree.  This year our tree is about 9 feet tall.  She's a beaut!  I don't have a particular Christmas tree "theme" but I am drawn to the woodland creatures as ornaments.  Here are some of my favorites...

From left to right, top row: Polar bear from West Elm, wooden candy cane from Target (few years ago), burlap reindeer from Target (few years ago); Bottom row: wooden moose from my childhood, bottle brush penguin from West Elm, bottle brush fox from West Elm

Then there's my ever-changing mantel... my plaster frame is of course a staple in my mantel decor, as well as books.  Then I used some antique owl bookends I spray-painted white, fake evergreen from JoAnn's, and some very large pine cones my mother gave to me.

For the pine cone garland, I screwed brass eyes into the top of the pine cones and then used baker's twine to connect them.

Also on the mantle are some Christmas jars I put together.  I loved the look of the Christmas snow globes that are all over Pinterest, but I wanted to do something cleaner and quicker.  I saw the idea to do a Christmas jar without the water/glycerin part of it.  It also makes it to where I can easily reuse the jars and its not a big clean up.  I bought small deer figurines at Hobby Lobby and used the same spray adhesive I used on my Joy to the World map to spray them down before dumping glitter on them.  I repeated the adhesive spray/glitter portion until it was well covered.  I used sugar as the snow and I bought the bottle brush trees from Hobby Lobby {which were orginally green} and soaked them in bleach and hot water to make them white.

We also have lighted garlands on the railings...

In the kitchen I add a little color with tea towels and rugs.  My rugs are from Target a few years ago, they also happen to be a popular place to lounge in the kitchen...

Above the sink I filled some of my jars with evergreen scraps from the tree and and cranberries into water filled jars...

I also like to get a Poinsettia every year... the faded red/pinkish color is my favorite.

On my table I have the same thing I've had since Thanksgiving, a mixture of brass candle holders, all from thrift stores, and glass containers with tapers.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas! I hope to post about some gifts I'm making for the children on both sides of the family soon!