Still catching up from taking a week off from blogging...I wanted to share about our cozy Christmas Saturday. We had planned on decorating the
Saturday after Thanksgiving, and thankfully everything went as planned! It was the perfect day to just lounge around after the holidays. We got home at a reasonable time on Friday so I made sure to have all of our fall decorations up by that night and our whole apartment cleaned!
I woke up early and started the hot chocolate and sausage balls, and then started pulling Christmas decorations out of boxes. It is just so exciting going through all of our Christmas decorations and finding a few pieces I had forgotten about lol.
So here's the deal with our fireplace. We have a gorgeous white mantel, but a wood burning fireplace. 1. We didn't want to spend money on fire logs, ash bucket, and the fireplace tool set. 2. We have heard they are very messy and we didn't want to get stains on the carpet around the fireplace...hello deposit money lol. So we put the "crackling fire" from Netflix on TV and put candles in the fireplace. We used leftover pillar candles from our wedding so it didn't cost us a thing and still looked great. Plus it was not cold enough for a fire, it was around 65 that day! I really, really love our white mantel!
Matthew played some Xbox while I sorted through all of our decorations. We ended up throwing away a good bit. Some stuff had been broken and some were really cheap pieces I had bought for my college apartment and we both didn't really like them. We kept the perfect amount and I've been picking up a small piece here or there when I see a good deal (aka Target dollar section. It's on point this year with their Christmas decorations)
I really wanted something for our mantel. Whether it be long garland draping off the sides or a bigger piece in the middle. I looked all over, but just wasn't willing to drop some serious cash on anything this year (I'll check back when it's on sale after Christmas!) So I looked through our stuff and decided to use what we had. The garland is just two really thin pieces of tree garland I had bought for something a couple of years ago and ended up not using it. I twisted them together and the wrapped a string of lights we already had around them. I thought about adding some ornaments to it, but really just loved the way it looked without them.
The gold trees are beautiful! This picture doesn't do them justice. My mema bought them at Hobby Lobby a few months ago and then decided she didn't have room for them so she just gave them to us. I saw them last time we were there and they retail for $40 a piece!!!!! I about died.
The red and white presents I found at Hobby Lobby last year a couple of weeks after Christmas for about $5 a piece! They are metal and I think they look so good against the white!
We are using my 6ft Christmas tree that I used in my college apartment. It's small, but the perfect size for us this year! We did by new ornaments so that they would all match lol. We found them at Target. The lights we put on our tree are also from my mema. She didn't need them anymore since she bought a pre-lit tree last year and she was just going to throw them away, so I happily took them off her hands ;) Our
tree skirt we found at Kirklands! I was really wanting a red plaid one and they had one and it was on sale...score! We also bought our stockings there for a really good price!
I found these placemats at Essex's last year on sale. Something about that Christmas plaid just gets me every.single.time. I love it!! The napkins rings I found at Belk last year after Christmas for .50 a piece! I bought 6 because I had no idea where we would be living or what kind of table we would have. I like to have extra than not enough, and they were so cheap lol.
I love our little apartment and I LOVE it decorated for Christmas. So cozy and relaxing. I absolutely love coming home and plugging the tree and mantel as soon as I walk in the door. I just love Christmas time.
We spent the day listening to Christmas music and decorating, watching Christmas movies, napping, snacking on sausage balls, Matthew played some Xbox while I finished addressing Christmas cards, then we made his favorite Hot Chicken Pasta for dinner, watched some of the Egg Bowl and Preds game and went to bed pretty early. It was the perfect, perfect day.
Let our first married Christmas begin!
