Showing posts with label Christmas decorations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas decorations. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

CHRISTMAS HOME TOUR | 2016

I am finally getting around to sharing our Christmas home tour! This is our first Christmas in our new home and I have had a lot of fun decorating it and deciding on how to decorate most parts of our home.

We'll start in the entryway...our big Christmas decor purchase this year...it was on sale and we just couldn't pass it up! We absolutely LOVE it! Last year at this time we were going through the house inspection, final walk through, etc. and each time we went in our home we kept saying how beautiful a 12ft tree would look there...actually it was all Matthew's idea. It was literally the first thing he said when we walked in the front door for the first time....that man, I just love him!
and the night time view
y'all know I love my Christmas plaid ;)


We also wrapped the stairway with pre-lit garland. I decided to keep it simple this year with the stairway, and just add the garland, but there are a ton of cute ideas on Pinterest for that, that I might try next year. Reagan can go up the stairs but she hasn't figured how to go down them, so I was able to snap this quick picture when I first decorated the stairs!

Here is the view from upstairs. You can see our smaller tree in Matthew's study. It's our 6ft tree that we used in our apartment last year and I love seeing that each time I pull into our driveway!

We moved our entryway table into Matthew's study for the time being since so I decided to put two small trees on the top shelf and then the small candle holders. The trees are from 
Michael's and the small candle holders are from Wal-Mart!

The side table in our dining room houses our Christmas village that my mema handed down to me this year. I didn't get any pictures of it at night, lit up, but here are some pictures of it.


I love it lit up at night!

Next up is our living room...we found our 7 1/2ft tree for a great deal on Amazon and I was thrilled!
This tree holds all of our meaningful ornaments. The ones we have picked out for special occasions over the past couple of years and the ones we have been gifted. I love being able to see them while we watch tv or sit by the fire.

Our mantel is basically setup how it was last year and we just still love it that way. 
We did get new stockings this year and we both LOVE them, and of course, Reagan had to have one ;) and it matches ours...woo hoo! I have been searching everywhere for a simple red knit sweater stocking that we could have our names added to and kept coming up empty. I knew Kohl's had the red sweater knit stockings but they all had a letter on them. Well I finally looked into them and realized you could get one without a letter on it...and they were half off! I ordered them and Matthew picked them up on his way home from work a couple of days later and we had our friend at church put our names on them. Reagan's stocking is from PetSmart and it already had the paw print on it. 


I have been eyeing these for over a year and saw them on sale last week when I popped in Kirklands to pick up a gift and had to grab them. My best friend has them and I fell in love with them when I first saw hers. There is a gold set that I am hoping to get soon.
Our stocking holders that we found at Target last year, we still love them!

These were made on my iPhone, but I draped the Christmas blankets over our couches in the living room to add a little pop of color. I love these blankets and got them a few years ago at Old Navy. I did this last year in our apartment and even did it in my apartment in Cookeville. 

Our kitchen table is the same setup from last year...and I still love it just as much. Again with the Christmas plaid. I just can't get enough!! I added some pine cones to my favorite milk glass dish and love the way they smell.

Our kitchen has a few touches of Christmas as well! I changed out our fall flowers to some red berrie twigs I found at Michael's and some Christmas greenery.  There is a snow globe with a wedding cake and the year "2015" on it in the background on the window sill that my mom gifted us last year for our wedding year, and there is a green lantern from Target right up under it that lights up at night, and then there are my Christmas towels on the oven door...more Christmas plaid ;)
 These two Christmas pieces are from Target's dollar section. I love them and they fit perfectly on our kitchen counter. 
 Reagan especially loves her treat jar!
And here is our Christmas card display. This is how I displayed our Christmas cards last year in our apartment and it worked out so well with the space we did it in, but this year I haven't been too thrilled with our card display, but just made it work because I didn't really have a whole lot of time to decide on how I want to display them. I'll work on that next year! 

Upstairs in our room there is a very small tree that I have had in my bedroom since I was in first grade, so it just kinda has to go in our bedroom every year :) and in our coastal themed guest bedroom I put some silver and blue ornaments in our lamps and I found that little tree at Wal-Mart and just knew we needed it for our coastal room! That's about it for upstairs this year. 

The only outside decor that we put up is a wreath on our front door, and I made a bow for it with some leftover ribbon from our 12ft tree. I also bought two big gorgeous poinsettias and put in our black planters but this past Saturday night the strong winds and then the ice absolutely destroyed them..and my my bow. Destroyed them as in half of the stems were laying on our door step when we walked out Sunday morning. So no pictures of that lol it's pretty sad!I did put my 'Joy' sign out that my dad made me a couple of years ago, so at least there is that! 

Monday, December 12, 2016

2016 CHRISTMAS CARDS

I set a new record with our cards this year. In preparation for our trip, I got to work on them and had (most of) them in the mailbox before December 1st. I usually try to mail them off the first or second week of December, but this year I dropped them in the mailbox as we were leaving for our cruise, on November 28th. Now let's just see if I can keep that up every year ;)

I am excited to (virtually) send you all our 2016 family Christmas card this morning! This year our girl, #ReaganCoats stole the show! We were originally going to use a picture from our anniversary session we had made back in the summer, but then when we brought our girl home we just knew she had to be in our Christmas card picture. So that's when we decided to have a few fall pictures made and from that we had our new Christmas card picture. I decided to use Minted again, and was once again, very pleased. Their adorable designs, amazing customer service, and extremely fast shipping wins me over every time!


I left the back blank again this year so I could hand write a small personal message. Also, this year I used our address stamp that my BIL gifted me last year at Christmas!

I am so happy with how our Christmas cards turned out this year. You can find our (first) Christmas card from last year, here.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

CHRISTMAS CARDS DISPLAY 2015

Growing up my mom always hung each Christmas card up as they came in the mail. They hung on our door frame in the kitchen leading into the living room, it was the first thing you saw when you walked in our back door and I loved it, and still do!

This was our first year sending our Christmas cards and I spent a lot of time picking out the design, the pictures to put on it and handwriting a little note on the back of them, So I know just how much time people put into their Christmas cards. 

I know not everyone puts as much time into them but they are still special! So I wanted to hang them up to display them somehow. We had this blank wall in our dining room and it was the perfect place to hang them up. I love how it turned out, and it was pretty simple! 

I just bought some red and white twine from Hobby Lobby and pinned it on our wall and I used these clothespins that were left over from our wedding reception. This display cost less than $4 for us!
 I decorated our console table a little with stuff I already had, and picked up a couple of cute items. That "oh deer" piece is from Target's dollar section. I loved the Christmas plaid on the deer and it ended up matching my ribbon that I used for the bows on the lanterns!

These clear glass lanterns are left over from our wedding. I LOVE them and LOVE decorating with them. We have about 10 and I am putting them to good use each season. For Christmas I just bought some cheap (AMAZINGLY scented) pine cones and stuffed in there. I found this ribbon for our wreath and made bows for both lanterns. My bows are lacking a little but they'll do for this year lol.

My favorite milk glass dish, ever! I just placed some extra pine cones in it.

 I am going to be so sad seeing these go next week. I really wish Christmas decorations stayed up longer!


Christmas card season is the sweetest of all!


Thursday, December 17, 2015

CHRISTMAS TABLESCAPE 2015

In the past couple of years I have really enjoyed decorating my table for every season. It's so fun and I love trying to come up with different ways to use things I already have. I also love adding a little bit of decor throughout our apartment. So here is our Christmas tablescape! I had so much fun putting this together...and Matthew even helped a little!


I mentioned in this post, that I got a really good deal on the placemats and napkin rings. I'm telling you, shopping after Christmas for Christmas decorations is THE best way to go! Stores are already marking a few things down so it's will be marked down even more the day after Christmas. 


The plates are a beautiful cream with gold detailing around the edges. I absolutely LOVE them. I scored a deal on these, too! A guy I used to work with in Cookeville had bought a storage unit and there was still a ton of stuff the other people just left so they were selling everything. He had about 50 antique plates and some beautiful platters. Well at the time I was collecting antique plates for our wedding so I bought all of them from him, and in those were these beautiful dinner plates as well as the salad plates. There is also a matching platter that comes in use all the time when having company over!
Aren't those napkin rings adorable?! And how fun is it that they match the gold detailing on the plates already?

We bought these napkins off of Amazon for Friendsgiving. I love the size and they are so easy to clean, just throw them in the washer and wash on delicate, perfect! 

And that's our Christmas tablescape! Since the placemats are so big I decided not to add a centerpiece. 

I love our table and decorating it for each season, and I absolutely can't wait to have a big farmhouse table one day to set!! 

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

THE SATURDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

We have blocked off on our calendars, because we already have some plans. Big plans. Exciting plans. Plans that I have been look forward to for years. We are decorating our first place together for our first married Christmas. Growing up we never decorated before Thanksgiving, we always decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was an all day event for my family as we had as we decorated the whole house. We started downstairs and then finished up that afternoon with all putting the tree up and decorating it. Then me and my sisters would put up our small tree in our bedrooms and decorate our bedrooms. My mom would make sausage balls and we would jam out to Christmas music all day while the fire was going. I remember growing up thinking how I couldn't wait to do this one day with my husband and eventually my family. Well the time has finally come to decorate for Christmas with my HUSBAND!! This is a tradition I want to start and carry on when we have children one day.


Since it won't take ALL day to decorate, since we live in a one bedroom apartment, we decided to stretch it out as much as possible with a few Christmas movies to make it an all day event. I am going to wake up early and get the sausage balls and hot chocolate going. We'll snack on sausage balls all morning and into the early afternoon while decorating and listening to Christmas music and Christmas movies.

Once everything is decorated I'll start dinner. I told Matthew I wanted to have a meal that we both like, and that I can cook every year on our decorating day, and of course his first response was Nashville's Hot Chicken Pasta. I'm not a fan of the hot chicken part, but I am more than okay with the fettuccine Alfredo part so I agreed! Matthew's mom found a copy cat recipe so we are going to use that! We already have some cookie dough so we'll have some warm chocolate chip cookies to eat later that night for dessert.

That night we'll alternate between the Egg Bowl (Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss) and the Predators game by our Christmas tree. To say I am excited would be an understatement. This is my favorite Saturday of the year, and I am so excited to finally share it with my sweet husband. I think traditions are so important, especially the ones your create in your first few years of marriage.

Do you and your husband have any Christmas traditions? If so, I would love to hear them!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Apartment tour...Christmas edition

I don't think I have given a full apartment tour yet but I did snap some pictures of all my Christmas decorations that I wanted to share. It's not much since  1. I don't like spending full price on decorations (the best time to buy them is after the holiday and I forgot last year...) 2. Even if I had remembered, I have a one bedroom so it's not like I have tons of space...but I like that, so it's okay! I really only decorated my living room and some of kitchen.
 
Living room
You'll just have to excuse that workout machine, I didn't want to knock my tree over trying to move it out of the picture lol.
 
I found those cute small Christmas pillows in Targets dollar section last year!
 
One year I made an ornament wreath with cheap plastic ornaments from dollar tree but it got all bent out of shape when I packed it up and some of the ornaments broke so I took them off and just put them in a cute Christmas box my mom had left over as a centerpiece for my coffee.
 
My Christmas tree! It's kinda plain but it'll do! I wanted to make a bow to put at the top but just didn't ever get around to it.
 
 
I found these cute metal presents at Hobby Lobby on major sale and just couldn't pass them up!! I think they would look so darn cute in front of a fire place but for now under the tree works, too!
 
These blankets from Old Navy are the BEST. I got one last year when they went on sale for $5 and I found this one this year and loved it!! They are so soft and have the cutest Christmas designs. So I draped them over my couches to add a little more color in there. Those pillows don't match it at all lol
 
My mom had an extra frame laying around so I found a cute print and hung it up over one of my end-tables.
 
Kitchen

 My new placemats! I think I shared these pictures a couple of weeks ago but
I just love them!
 
I made this plate a couple of years ago and put it in place of my little chalkboard for Christmas time.
 

 My mom got me this adorable apron last year for Christmas, I think it makes a cute decoration when it's not being used...which is always. I'll take it home to use while we are cooking for Christmas dinner ;)

I hung up a few canvases I made a couple of years ago just to add a little more to my kitchen!
 
Outside my apartment
My dad made this ADORABLE sign to stick out there and I absolutely LOVE it! He did such a good job. I bought some cute poinsettias to set out there with it! That is my Christmas wreath I made last year. I was never a big fan of it but it was cheap to make so it worked. Some of the mesh was still smashed from being packed up. My mom made me a new one and it's MUCH better! I just forgot to take a new picture.
 

And that's it!! I love it!!!!
I feel like I haven't had my decorations up long at all and I don't want to take them down anytime soon, but I will probably take them down before I go home for Christmas so I don't have to worry about that when I get back.
I don't know if I have mentioned it before but I LOVE CHRISTMAS!