If guess you’re normal people, you do reasonable things and deck your halls with boughs of holly.
But if you’re me, you deck the halls with redwood greenery that you chopped off the bottom of some trees at your neighborhood park. There are a lot of redwoods in this town.
I apologize in advance for all the careless things I’m about to say having nothing to do with Christmas decor. At time of this blog I have been shut up completely alone in the house with two small children for three days. Northern California’s Winter Storm of 2014, you see. (AKA: a day or two of rain that made me very lazy.)
This year’s Christmas decorating was a lot of fun. I have a new space to play in! And a fireplace mantel of my very own.
This year was kind of a hand-made, old-fashioned theme. You know, lots of fresh greenery, strung popcorn, and paper stars.
(I thank my brother Josiah for painstakingly stringing this popcorn last year while watching multiple runs of Elf.)
(Paper star tutorial found here!)
You can see my redwood clippings are a little erm…shall we say scorched from the fireplace. But that’s why I like free things.
On the other hand, this non-scorched cedar garland was 25 feet for $16.99 at Costco. I now know that if I only had the choice to buy one thing every Christmas season, it would be cedar garland. This did my doorway and the bottom half of my bannister. No other embellishments needed.
The wreaths I made for free out of my stolen redwood clippings! And dang, let me tell you, wreath-making is not my favorite. The end.
My imperfect space-branch tree just so happens to bring hearts to my eyes and I offer no apologies for that.
This year’s plan for enjoying the Christmas season was not to have any plans. It’s always my goal to have my holiday calendar done and my shopping finished by November. Cookie baking is in the future, but not the near future because I already ate a lot of chocolate covered peppermint Joe-Joes.
So there you are. Do the things you love to do at Christmas and forget the rest! What are you guys up to this December?
If you enjoyed this post, you can go here to see more Christmas home tours, seasonal decor and holiday-themed tutorials.
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