Here at our house, today is a day to rest, read, and watch football.
It is wonderful to decompress like this, after a solid week of Christmas preparations. All of our boxes and bins of decorations were brought down and sorted early, but nothing was put in place until just a few days ago. Our Christmas tree is in the bay window in the Family room.
We chose shatterproof plastic ornaments at Home Depot for the tree, all in red and green and silver ... even up close, you can't tell that these ornaments are plastic! Alice and Dorothy (the kittens) are too full of mischief to risk our collection of glass ornaments this year. Perhaps we can use them next year.
Our daughter bought a white tree for herself, and it is in our upstairs landing. She decorated it with hot pink and silver ornaments (you guessed it ... plastic).
Our Family Room mantel was the first thing I decorated, with (plastic) bead garland, (silk) poinsettia trees, and real magnolia from the tree in our front yard.
The large painting above the mantel doesn't leave much room for decorations, and these little trees from Big Lots are perfect! Their bases are tied up with burlap, just like real trees.
Our (still unfinished) staircase, is draped with artificial greens, jewel-colored bead garland, plastic ornaments, and more magnolia leaves.
I made all of the bows you see here and on the tree from ribbon I got at Target ... a 100-foot roll was only $10! (I have a whole lot of ribbon left.)
The wreath on the inside of our front door holds our collection of White House ornaments. I find this is a very special way to showcase these incredibly detailed ornaments. There is still a bit of room on the wreath to add more ornaments for a few more years.
We didn't do much outdoors. It has been very cold and windy this December, and I'm too much of a weenie to spend a lot of time out there decorating. All I could muster was a wreath on the front door ...
... and Santa hats and wreaths of bells on my concrete greyhound statues.
Our whole family, except for our middle daughter who lives in Montana, was here on Christmas for dinner of tacos, enchiladas, and other non-traditional goodies. (We do things a little bit differently at our house.) Flowers on the dining room table were red roses from the grocery store ... all of the ones in the garden are frozen.
I'll bet you are curious to know about our Christmas presents. My dear husband gave me chrome Crager SS wheel covers, so I can add some personality to my golf cart ...
... and he had a Greyhounds Rock Fredericksburg tire cover made for my Jeep! He designed this logo that we use for Greyhounds Rock, (our nonprofit charity that raises money for canine cancer research) Isn't he incredibly talented?
One of my presents to him was this giant, red H for the wall of his garage. It's part of an old advertising sign, it lights up, and it's over 4 feet high! I was thrilled to find this at Class and Trash while I was shopping there a few weeks ago with Sherry ... I love this store!! (For more posts about Class and Trash, and to see what a fabulous store this is, click HERE and HERE.)
I only bought the H ... not the O.
Since all of our decorations went up so late this year, I think I'll keep them up for another week or so, so we can enjoy them for a little bit longer.
What did Santa bring you for Christmas?