As part of the Christmas Tour of Homes, I present my humble abode's Christmas spirit.
Disclaimer: I didn't do much, but since this is the first time I've done anything for the holiday in years, I get extra credit for any effort. If it were just me and my husband in the house, I'd skip decorating, but the special Christmas decorations seem to put a certain joy in my son's heart. I'm an old softy like that.
The cowboy hat probably needs an explanation. Since I haven't decorated for Christmas in *years*, I owned only one Christmas decoration, the wooden snowman you see in the left of the picture. My mom provided the 4.5-foot tree and the twinkly lights, but I didn't have anything suitable to top the tree. I had an old teal ribbon for a while, but that was hideous, so in a fit of silliness, I put the straw cowboy hat from my son's toy box on the top. I think it looks kind of dandy, an odd homage to my husband's desert upbringing in Tucson.
Ben and I made "to" cards to put on all of our presents. I used a quarter of a piece of construction paper, and cut different shapes from other colors of paper to glue on the big piece. I made pine trees, shooting stars, and snowmen. They added a nice touch to our wrapped presents (which are almost all up at my mom's house already since that's where we'll be for Christmas). Ben really enjoyed rubbing glue on his cheeks.
My son is not quite two, and his favorite toys are balls and trucks. I am not going to set him up for failure and naughtiness by putting shiny balls on the tree. I have no desire to spend all my day putting him in a time out for playing with ornaments. We would also put on beaded garland, but he loves wearing mardi gras beads around his neck, and I know he would try pulling off the garland to drape around himself. Another naughty possibility. I got flat cards full of these little red bows on twisty ties, sixty for three bucks. Ben helped me put them on the tree by picking out where I should put them. Also, I never thought I would put multi-colored twinkle lights on the tree because I find them garish, but in the same train of thought of "Christmas is for Ben", I figured he'd like looking at the different colors. I got one strand of white and one strand of colored. He loves them, and I had to teach him how NOT to put them in his mouth because they are not candy, even if they look like magical yumminess.
A couple of years ago, Chris received the wooden snowman in a gift exchange. I liked it a lot, so I put it in my cubicle at work and left it there, all year round. In those two years, NO ONE commented on how inappropriate it was to have a "Let It Snow" sign up during summertime. I guess that's a side effect of living in Wisconsin. No one is ever surprised by snow. The small snowman lights up, and delights Ben to no end.Now we'll leave the dining room and move into the living room.
This is our little entry way. Our charming little house has arched doorways throughout the first floor, and I thought it would be a nice touch to decorate the arches to showcase that architectural feature. I found the idea for these ornaments on Parent Dish several weeks ago, and I thought it would be fun to put them together with Ben. That was poorly thought out, since I won't let him play with either the stapler or the scissors. I let him handle the finished ornaments before I hung them up, but he ended up jumping on them, and it took a while to reshape them and smooth out the creases he created. I like the end result, though; I find them whimsical.
And now for my final decorating effort... I pinned up some twine on the wall with thumbtacks and used clothes pins to hold up every Christmas card we received so far. I also displayed the photos of our various nieces and nephews included in the cards. On the bottom row, in the middle, you may recognize our little Anna's birth announcement. Technically, it came in the mail since I had the wrong address on the envelope and it came back, so I put it up with the rest.There it is! My addition to BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes. Check out her site for many, many links to other homes around the blogosphere. It's been wonderful having you over for a visit. I'd offer you a sugar cookie, but I ate them all over the weekend.
I'm supposed to offer you refreshments. I have Walmart-brand orange soda in the fridge and a copious supply of apple juice. I'm making cheesecake cups for Chris to bring to work this week. I'm making a graham cracker crust using some stale graham crackers in the cupboard, using a Jello no-bake cheesecake box (following the directions), and topping them with cherry pie filling. They'll be in little muffin cups, which make for terrific portion sizes, as long as you only have one. What are the chances of that, you ask? Yeah. I know. Slim. The only thing that's "slim" around here.
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Since I took pictures for the tour, I've gotten more into the spirit of things, and I've added a few more vignettes to my home. You can check them out at this post.
