Home for the Holidays

We had the good fortune of staying home for the holidays this year. In fact, we hosted Christmas dinner on Christmas day at our home. This was our house, Christmas morning, before our guests arrived. It was white, alright.  : ) I'm not a huge fan of outdoor lights, but we do put grapevine wreaths on our windows, string lights on the two evergreens on either side of the front door, hang a giant wreath above the porch, and I fly a Christmas flag. At night, those simple lights look really pretty set back in the trees.

Now that Harbor is walking, I actually find myself scalling back on my decor. I love the festive feeling that all the glitter and shimmer provides, but this year, I definitely was feeling the "less is more" vibe. This is our guest bathroom. In years past, I have decked it out, but this year, I added Harbor's picture with Santa and stopped with that. Harbor and Santa are big buddies now that they have met in person.

Our hallway banister

I kept it pretty clutter-free in the kitchen as well. We hosted my 5th grade teachers' work party, David's company Chrismtas party, and Christmas dinner. That left little room in the kitchen for anything but the necessities. I filled a vase with ornaments and replaced my "cuisine" sign with "Noel" above the stove. I decorated the letters a few years ago and they have held up suprisingly well.

In our living room, I decorated the mantle with our handmade stockings......

swapped out a few regular pillows for some festive fun...

hung a painted ceiling tile I made two years ago....

and set up a little area for our Christmas cards. I love the idea of having a "Christmas card tree" and hanging the cards with ribbon, but I have this nightly obsession  ritual of looking through all the cards, again and again and again... and well, having to tie and untie them every time sounds exhausting. Thus, they sleep right here on our built-ins in a vintage santa bucket.

As of today, my traditional cards have been recycled into gift tags for next year and my personalized cards have been scrapbooked. I started scrapping my cards in 1998. They are so much fun to look through. The big red "D" ring binder holds all of our friend and family cards, and the little plaid album is where I scrapbook our card that we send every year. I started making our Christmas cards the year we were married- eight years now. I always include a newsletter and picture. Every year I quiz David on some random tidbit and see if he knows what year it happened... oh, the joys having a yearly newsletter! Ha, ha!

This is my son, Harbor William's, room. He thinks dogs are the cat's meow, so we fancied up a canine tree covered in tulle (leftover from his first birthday party a few weeks ago.) I normally hate colored lights inside, but for Harbor's room, it totally just worked. The orange and white lights looked so whimisical as a night light.

Here is our Christmas tree, set up in our foyer.

We entertained 14 dinner guests and had a really nice time just relaxing and visiting.

We put eight at our dining room table, and six at a long folding table.

Just for fun, I made place setting cards.  : )

And this is the way our tree looked right before dinner was served. The jury is still out what Harbor loves the most... today has been a play day around here!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas at home with the ones you love most!