Christmas Home Tour 2017

I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving yesterday! We had a great time with David's side of the family and we are headed up to Kentucky to spend the weekend with my family. We are excited because this is the first year that the entire family has been together for Thanksgiving since all of us cousins started having babies. It will be like a mini family reunion having everyone under one roof at my Granny's house.

For today I wanted to keep it quick and light and share a few quick pictures of our Christmas decorations this year. I decided to go a bit different with the color scheme than I have in years past but I'm in love!

I've wanted to try out this color scheme for a while now, but didn't want to splurge on a bunch of new ornaments and decorations. When we first got married I went with the more traditional red, green and gold tree and decor. However, Audrey's birthday falls just two weeks after Christmas and last year I was planning to do a Winter ONEderland theme in blue, pink and white. (I had already bought a ton of decorations for her party on clearance the previous year.) I really wanted to not have to worry about taking the tree down before her birthday party so I bought a couple of those 50 piece sets of ornaments from Hobby Lobby for half off and decorated the tree in blue, pink and white ($20 for 100 ornaments ain't bad!). This color scheme gave me ALL the heart eye emoji's and I seriously considered going that route again this year because I LOVE pink! BUT I ultimately decided to go with red, turquoise and white since this has been something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Between all of the blue and white pieces I used for Audrey's party last year and some old red decorations, I didn't need to buy much to round everything out. I did end up making a trip (actually two) to Hobby Lobby to get one more pack of ornaments and a few accent pieces for the tree. I love how it all turned out!

This year

Last year

I wanted to use mostly blue and white with pops of red. Red can be such an overpowering color and I really wanted the blue to really stand out.

I know most people probably put the "star" on the top of the tree last, but I like to do it first. I tend to work from the top down. Does anyone else do this?

My sweet helpers. David was such a trooper. The worst part of an artificial tree is pulling the branches apart and David knows how much I hate it. He helped me pull out the branches and string the lights on, which was such a huge help.

You remember a few days ago in this post I mentioned how my OCD is in full force when decorating the tree? Yea, it's bad. It took me forever to get this done because I kept putting a few on, stepping back, moving something, add a few more, and so on. There can't be too many reds next to each other. The flowers have to be spaced correctly and the same color can't be too close together. And then those things sticking out of the side liked to have drove me crazy! Anyone else have this problem? Just me?

Anyway, every year we get Raley a new nutcracker and this year I took her to Hobby Lobby to pick one out. She picked out the fairy ballerina you'll see a little further down. I love this tradition though and it was one that was started by accident. The first year I got one (I think she was two) and it wasn't intended to be for her but she loved it and wanted to hold him all the time. Then last year I got her one and surprised her with it as a hint that we were going to see The Nutcracker ballet later that night (which she did not sit through by the way.) This year she was so excited to pick out her own nutcracker and has been asking for a while when we get to go see the ballet. She kept telling me that she will sit still and be quiet this year. I took her to see The Dance Company's production of The Nutcracker last weekend with some friends and she actually did really well! I'm excited to make this a tradition and for Audrey to get to join in in the years to come.

I would like to get Audrey something special each year as well but we haven't found the perfect idea. I thought about either snowmen or gingerbread men. I was leaning toward snowmen but believe it or not I actually had a hard time finding snowmen that I thought she would like. Hobby Lobby doesn't have the selection they usually do this year. I also thought about doing nutcrackers for her as well because she gets excited when she sees them or when we read the book. Idk...anyone have any ideas?

I've never had a good place to hang up Christmas cards....they usually end up filling up the front of my fridge. This year I took this old window frame I had and strung up some twine to hang my cards. Can't wait to get my first one in the mail!