crafty christmas!

As a couple just starting out, we didn't have a bunch of Christmas decore and didn't really notice our lack of festive favors until the beginning of this month. I had gotten a few adorable ornaments from my friends for Christmas last year and a Christmas villiage that was my Pawpaw's so we had a little bit of a start, but not much!

But now thanks to my sweet mamma, Pinterest, and hours in the craft room I now have all the glitz and glam I need for a happy holiday!

Ps. Lighting in our house is really bad and gives all my pictures a weird yellow-y color. Please ignore that.

My mom and dad got us this tree and most of the sparkly ornaments! The rest were all gifts!

You can't see it very well, but we made that tree skirt! Got the idea from here, but I wasn't willing to spend $65 on something that lays on the floor once a year so we Googled tree skirt patterns and made our own version for $20 (10 for the fabric at Hancock and 10 for the monogram in the mall. I desperately want my own monogramming machine! Did you know Singer makes one that sews and monograms! What a dream!) I'm not exactly at the circle-sewing level yet, so mom did the sewing while Sydney and I cut the fringe. It was a lot of fringe!

I love wrapping with brown paper! It gives you so much room to be creative! I'm getting pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. The picture at the top of this blog is one I did last night.

This is Howard. He lived at Hancock Fabrics, but now he's moved in with us! He probably regrets it though because Jack keeps trying to eat him.

My little Christmas villiage! I put batting down so it would be snowy (even though its still like 75 degrees outside...bummer) and used fancy glitter paper from Michael's to make the banner! I thought they kind of looked like icicles, plus they make my fireplace candles blend in with the other decorations. Mom made those cute little stockings to match the tree skirt!

Our living room holds most of the decorations, but we have some little things set up throughout the house. This snowman and sleigh from my Aunt Becky sit on top of Tommy's protein cabinet below the elf painting I made at Sips n Strokes a few years ago.

It's all coming together and making our little house look so nice and warm! I wish Christmas were further away so I could enjoy it a little longer. But who knows, I might just leave it all up for a while!