Come on in! Christmas home, 2023 🎄🎄

 

Happy Tuesday, friends! It's my favorite time of year to decorate our home, and I always love seeing how other people decorate theirs...so if you're reading this post (again this year), thank you and consider sharing your own home for those of us who love to see such things! A few things before I start: most of what I have is old. I don't buy a lot of new things to decorate with from year to year. A lot of what I have was even given to me by family members who no longer wanted the items! I may get new things to add here and there, but it's never anything fancy or expensive. Hobby Lobby's 50% Christmas is my favorite! I also am not a professional, obviously, and I am definitely not an influencer. If I had to pick a "style theme" for our home, I would consider it comfy, cozy, and lived-in. That definitely is what most works for us! The thing I love about posts like this (and seeing people's homes in person) is that each decorated home is beautiful in its own way. I love seeing what works for families and hearing why they love what they love. Are you like me in this? Also, I always want things to seem truly as they are. Anyway, without further ado, welcome to our Christmas home! 

Right before I took these pictures, I threw the pumpkins away. 🤣 

I love how the kitchen turned out this year! I do things differently from year to year for a couple of reasons; I like to change things up, for one, and I can't ever remember what to put where. Do you do this or do you keep things the same from year to year? There is no wrong way, friends! This is all part of what makes each home beautiful and unique. One thing I do similarly each year is this favorite tiered stand. 

I love the look of wreaths on cabinets! I was inspired in this by a friend; my inexpensive way to do the same was to find the cheapest wreath they sell at Hobby Lobby, and to use my own ribbon to tie around it and hold it in place. I think each wreath cost $4 and there are two here, two across from this over the oven, and one on the back of the downstairs bathroom.

Why do I love tea towels so much? I have them all over the place both here at home and in the bookstore!

I love to use all of the spaces in our home to add little touches, like in this picture above. The ornament you see was one I bought while on Nantucket last year, and I keep it out all year long, though in a less conspicuous spot. I love little keepsakes and memories from favorite trips!

I'm including this picture above again to show you the little Google nest speaker that we have in the kitchen. If you were here, you'd hear Christmas music playing at any given time! We have one in the living room as well as one in our bathroom upstairs, so that we can play music all over the house. 

We have a new Christmas tree this year! Ours from last year was shedding all over the place, so we knew it was time for a new one. Todd picked this one up last year after Christmas, and we love how it looks! It's so much easier to put together, too, which is an added bonus. I don't love the topper, but our star was too big for it, since this one is a tiny bit taller than our old one; even though I am still unsure about the hat as a topper, I'm sticking with it for now. 

As much as I love beautiful and new ornaments, I am so sentimental about all of these nostalgic ones that I will never stop using. Is there anything better than a picture ornament from your kids' elementary school days? I think not. Also, I love the blend of colored and white lights together. Our tree is not fancy and we do the lights ourselves. 

I love the little touches on the bookshelf as well, that are all so meaningful.

This Mr. and Mrs. Clause used to reside at my dad's house and were passed along to me.

And this Clifford was always Noah's favorite ornament!

These are things on the table that sit next to where Todd sits on the couch. 🤣 He's really not a Bah Humbug, but I think it's funny.

These next two are my favorite newer editions: my sons got me both of these for Christmas two years ago. One is the familiar passage from Isaiah, and the second one is the lyrics to my favorite song from my favorite Christmas movie! 

This is one of my favorite pictures of the boys when they were young. We'd gone to the zoo for Zoo Lights with my dad and Sandy, and I made them pose behind this giant snowflake. It turned out so cute that I framed it, even though it's dark, and it stays out all year long.

I think I mentioned that I got new bedding this year, and I love it! I added some pillows since I took this early in November, and I'll show a more recent one sometime this week. The wrinkles have since fallen out of the bedding also, as we've been using it for a couple of weeks now. 

And that's about it! Or at least, that's all of the pictures I took. I have small touches here and there all over the house, and all of the guys upstairs have Christmas lights in their rooms as well, but I'll leave that to your imagination. I'm including this picture below because this is how it looks when I go from one season to the next in our home. It's always a hot mess for several hours as I'm cleaning and collecting, packing away, unpacking, and placing and rearranging. Anyone else?

A few other things that I don't have pictured are the candles that I always have burning. I always pick either a cinnamon scent, or a Christmas tree scent. Those are my favorite! I talked about music, but I also will have a Hallmark Christmas movie playing at any given moment. I hope you consider sharing what your homes look like! I'd love to see yours, even if you don't typically share things like that. Thanks for reading my blog, friends. Love to all!