Christmas Decorations

I don't know if it was the late Thanksgiving or the tough semester but it took awhile to get in the Christmas spirit this year and even longer to get the decorations up. And in all honesty, it looks like the grinch visited the outside of our house since we have zero decorations out there this year. Usually I'm all about the house decked out in lights but I just wasn't feeling it this year. 

The inside did get a little sparkle though. Instead of decorating inside the jars this year, I strung up some tinsel around the outside of the chandelier and hung ornaments from it. The ornaments are just clear glass ones that I squirted some green and red paint into and swirled around.

I hung a couple of small wreaths in each of our large windows and our large wreath got a front and center position this year around our little window in the fireplace. I kept the rest of the mantle fairly simple with a few owls, some red and silver tinsel and a few candles. My favorite thing this year is the card display. I took thick paper ribbon and stapled it up above the wreath and used clothes pins to hang up the christmas cards we received so we could enjoy them for the next few weeks.

This year we have the lovely addition of the baby gate which isn't pretty but it has made it possible to have a tree and put out presents with Will around. We undid one side of the gate going around the fireplace and added a panel so it went past the edge of the couch so we could put the tree in the corner.

Here is our tree without the gate going around it. Going with the lack of Christmas spirit was that we didn't go to our normal place to pick up a tree and instead picked up a small inexpensive one from Lowe's. It is definitely small for the room so we put it up on a small table (which also was our initial solution for keeping Will away before the gate) and piled the gifts next to the table.

We're excited for tomorrow morning and opening presents with Will and just having a nice quiet family day. I also DIY'ed a gift for Nate which I will share with you later, but I'm super excited for him to open it!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!