Christmas Decorations

It's been a while, I know. I'm a horrible blogger. Sometimes living life just gets in the way of blogging life though. We got back from a weekend trip to Disney on Sunday and I'll be posting pictures of that soon, but in the mean time you can check out some of our Christmas decorations at Today's Housewife today...

Showered...

I mentioned that my mom has been here for the last couple of weeks. Other than being great company and Luke's personal assistant, (He pretty much thinks she is at his beck and call.) she is fabulous at putting together a beautiful shower. It worked out perfectly for me because I was helping to host a shower for 3 girls at my home last Saturday. All three moms are due in April or May and it turned out beautifully.

There are few things that my mom has taught me and I have learned doing showers:
1. The little touches make the difference. We had a mix of boys and girls, so we chose to use all yellow and white. So I found small yellow ducks to place around my house to add touches of "baby". I also used some of the boys old gifts to decorate with. I wouldn't regift them, but they are perfect for using in decorations.
2. Consider hosting a display shower. This doesn't work for every occasion, but when it works, it can really make your shower pleasant. If you have a large number of invites or multiple guests of honor, you can make the shower "display only" and not open presents. We made a note on the invitation that you could choose to bring your gift unwrapped for display or wrapped for each mother to open later. Each mother had her own table for her gifts and there were a mixture of gifts to look at and gifts that were wrapped. The mothers-to-be loved not being the center-of-attention and the guests were relieved not to have to sit through opening 30+ gifts.
3. Elegant most often is simple. We tried to keep our food and table very simple. We chose to make double recipes of several dishes instead of making 6-8 different items to serve. It made the food easy to arrange tastefully on the table and easy to serve. We also chose to stick with a simple color scheme. White and yellow were mixed with clear glass and silver pieces. Not everything was "matchy-matchy" but it still looked as if everything belonged on the table together.

What do you think ?

Use serving pieces of different heights to add interest to your table. We even used a box and a second table cloth to elevate our cake.

Placing all your beverages in a different room than the food helps traffic flow and keeps people mingling.

Wooden blocks that my boys already had added an extra touch to several areas.

I replaced my usual coffee table items with toys and a hurricane full of blocks.

For my gift, I made each mother a diaper cake using their nursery colors and theme. It helped to distinguish each table and personalize their gift. I also made closet dividers that I'll be detailing on Today's Housewife this week.



I created a baby carriage from a watermelon to help dress up the table.

Tim sent me daffodils the week of the shower that were perfect for our color scheme. (He's so good!) And we filled a small vase with seasonal candy for guests to guess the number of pieces. The closest guess got to take them home as a prize.

It was looking a lot like Christmas...

Welcome to our new home!

I've been intending to do this for several weeks now, but I thought I'd post a few pictures of our home decorated for the season before I take it all down. Plus, I've hardly posted any pics of our new house here in Georgia so this satisfies that need as well. Enjoy the short tour...

This is our entry table. It's one of my favorite spots this year.
I love the Luminous Nesting Bowls and the Celebration Wreath.



We haven't put curtains on our back doors, so I hung two fresh greenery wreaths. The sun shone on them every morning so the house smelled so nice all month.


This is my snowman collection on top of our media console.


We don't have a mantle so I improvised with an armoire and used my Holiday Tabletop Tree to decorate the large space.


One of my favorite features of our house is the tall ceilings and space above the kitchen cabinets. Here's one of the spaces that I decorated this Christmas.


My china hutch in the dining room.


I loved the way this turned out on my dining room buffet. It felt very whimsical and fun, yet still dressy enough for the dining room.


Our HUGE tree. Tim and I did not realize it was this big when we saw it in Hobby Lobby. But thankfully it fits and really was lovely in our living room this year. We just can't ever move to a house with smaller ceilings!

My Cathedral Luminary - so simple and elegant. I just love this!

Okay, so maybe I love it all. I wish I could tell you that I didn't go shopping yesterday and hit all the post-Christmas sales. I did though. But that just means that I have more beautiful decorations for next year. Christmas certainly isn't about the decorations, but there's just something so beautiful about celebrating the holiday in your home with your family. For me, this is what our new home looks like. I hope your home gives you the same warm, comfortable feeling however it's decorated and wherever you are.