Happy Christmas 2012

December 2012

Happy Christmas.... in April.  One day this blog will catch up and I won't be posting these in the off-season. Every Christmas I like to document our decorations and general festiveness.  This was our second big Christmas in the house and we made some additions.  Unfortunately, we did not celebrate in the house as both Josh and I were visiting family but I still really enjoyed the decorating.

The mantel got it's fresh cedar garland and poinsettas, I hung our christmas artwork above and broke out our christmas gnomes.   Add some new awesome personalized stockings made by Josh's aunt Connie and it was starting to look legit.

The snow village was back out and wood bead garlands on the chandlier.  We added some small Christmas trees to the hutch and added an Elf on the Shelf to our liquor selection.

We tried a new tree this year, we moved away from our Noble Fir and tried a Blue Spruce.  We loved it, it dropped less needles, it is more open and allowed us to get all of our big ornaments up.  I will give it negative points for the fact that you now can see the wires for our lights, but still I think this might be a new tradition.  My favorite addition this year- this awesome moss covered reindeer I got on a whim at Target- so awesome-sauce. 

Outside, we lit our Mountain Oak, added candles in the windows and even hung icicle lights from our porch gutters.  Add to that my new wreath and we felt our halls were decked!  We spent a wonderful weekend up at our friends beach house in Rockaway and got our Christmas sweaters out- Gus joined in as well.

Merry Christmas!

 and of course, just to prove I am not a true blogger my centerpiece says happy fall.... I can't help it gourds never die.

Our Christmas Castle

Christmas 2011

As I have mentioned in the last three posts, we got a chance this year to do Christmas in our house.  For the first time we bought a fresh Noble Fir at our local stand.  Insert, we also had to buy a tree stand, ornaments, Christmas lights, etc.  We also got some fresh cedar garland for the mantel and for around the front door. It was fun putting everything out and about. Small decorations were spread out around the house: vases of red flowers, red bead garlands and some plaid bows. We lite up our lone tree in the front yard and put some lights on the porch. I bought adorable ceramic and twig reindeer to protect our front door and even our buffalo head got a little sprucing up.  

For the mantel, I hung out stockings, added some poinsettias and hung some winter photographs on the wall.  In the dining room, I used our freshly stained built-in top to put up a collection of ceramic snow village houses my mom used to collect.  When I finally bought my own house she let me pick out my favorites and sent them along so I could have my own little village.  This always fascinates people who come to visit, one because they are beautiful and all lite up and two because 26 year olds don't normally collect ceramic Christmas houses.

This was also our first real 'party' at our house.  So we broke out the few nice plates and serving dishes we had.  We set up a drink station in the family room with warm spiced cider and a vintage red coleman cooler filled with wine and beer.  For the first party I made a gluten free cobbler, and a fresh apple pie, we also bought some cookies and a pound cake from Whole Foods.  For the second party we bought a honey baked ham, I made fresh biscuits and cut up fixings.  I made homemade cranberry sauce as well as spinach and artichoke dip. We also made New England clam chowder and served them in espresso cups, which was a huge hit!  It was great to see family and friends and I think we made a good showing!  Happy Christmas!