Christmas Wonder

| Allison

Hello, dears!

AHHHH. Christmas is ONE. WEEK. AWAY. *loud gasp* Now that I’ve told you a fact you already knew… today I’m going to show you guys how we’ve decorated our house for Christmas! This year we went easy on the small trinket decorations and instead used fresh greenery, which looks AMAZING. Hopefully this post will give you some decorating inspiration and spread a little Christmas spirit. 😉

Firstly, we drove around the farm and cut literally heaps of cedar, white pine, holly, and so on. We snipped the branches into manageable pieces, then used floral wire to attach them to a long piece of thicker wire.

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We mostly used cedar for this garland, tucking in bits of holly after we hung it up. Sadly, the holly dried out all too soon after I took this picture, so right now it’s just a cedar garland.

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I think it adds a beautiful, elegant touch, don’t you? (I apologize if it doesn’t look that way in the picture… The hall is rather poorly lit. :[] ) Oh, and notice those frames? They hold mainly the old letters and papers we found in the log house. 🙂

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We also decorated the three mantels downstairs. I only have pictures of this one, but the other two are similar, only with candles instead of pinecones and lights. It’s too bad the TV has to ruin the effect on this one, but there’s not really another good place to put it…

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Here you can see the details a little better. I LOVE this picture! Megan painted the edges of each pinecone with white acrylic paint; then we added them to an abundance of cedar branches, and wound in a string or two of peppermint lights to make the whole thing glow. ❤

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Making garlands is a lot of work, so we decided to take a more minimal approach outside. XD Mom made an enormous wreath with a huge form and red bow she had for the side porch, where people usually come into the house. (I took this picture while it was snowing – thus the white blurs. XD)

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Megan and I each attached a little bunch of greenery and a bow to two old runner sleds we have. They look quite cheery on the front porch. 🙂

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It took me a while to figure out the best way to tie the bows, even though they’re so simple. Using a small amount of wired ribbon doesn’t help anything, though. XD

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And that’s about it for the greenery. Well, for that scale, anyway… now for the Christmas tree! We found a nice tree farm just a few minutes away from us. It was almost the perfect weather for Christmas-tree-hunting: cold enough to feel Christmasy, but not bone-chillingly, miserably freezing. 😛

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Of course, we had to traverse practically the whole place before we found the right one, but we did at last! It wasn’t perfect by any means (it has a huge gap in the back), but it was about the tallest one we could find (8-9 feet), and we wanted a big one for our Great Room. 😀

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We had to go get more lights that night since we didn’t have enough to wrap around the tree. XD We could even fit all the ornaments on with room to spare this time – amazing! Doesn’t it look magical? We turned the lights off and listened to Christmas music while drinking hot chocolate and admiring our handiwork after we finished. So lovely. ❤

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The tree is one of my favorite decorations because it makes the whole house feel SO festive and cozy and Christmasy. Non-religious decorations certainly aren’t necessary to the holiday and can be distracting, but I do think they can contribute to making the season feel special, set-apart, and full of awe, which is what we should feel when celebrating Christ’s birth.

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Isn’t this picture neat? I love how the hall looks cold and dark, but the open doorway leads your eye to the cozy, warm room beyond.

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Speaking of warm rooms, the fireplace really does heat things up. I LOVE IT. We all do, especially Mom. I kinda don’t want to leave it after supper and go upstairs to my chilly studio to do more productive things… so sometimes I don’t. 😉 It’s especially perfect for Christmas time.

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When I think of this nativity scene, I think of unwrapping the fragile brown crepe paper from porcelain figures which seep with cold from being stored in the outer regions of the house for months. This nativity scene has survived many years with only minor injuries and losses, and now it gets to be displayed in our new house for the first time. 🙂

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And that, my dears, is a small tour of our ready-for-Christmas home. I hope this post was as cozy and fun to read as it was to write. 🙂

Did you decorate your house for Christmas? If so, what is your favorite decoration? Have you made garlands or wreaths before? And aren’t wood fireplaces grand?

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!

****Allison****

P. S. I’m trying something new – drastically cutting the amount of pictures in a post, but posting twice a week. We’ll see how it goes! Look out for one more Christmas post before the 25th. 🙂 Until then!

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84 thoughts on “Christmas Wonder”

  1. Ohh! I love y’alls idea for the decoration! 😀 THAT CHRISTMAS TREE IS SO PRETTY!!! 😀 Y’all’s house looks so pretty! ❤ 😉 I really enjoyed seeing your festive decorations! 😀

    Merry Christmas!

    -Laura ❤ 😉

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  2. Okay, Ik you said to name one decoration but I have to name two. ;o First, are the stockings. We got ourselves fur stockings, I love them all!! Second, artificial decorative twigs we put in our Christmas tree!

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  4. AHHH SO PRETTY! ❤ (Hey, look at me, actually commenting WHEN I READ A POST instead of bookmarking it and forgetting until 4 weeks later. *applauds myself*) I absolutely love the decorations made out of greenery – they look so beautiful with the white and brown colors in your house. 🙂 The pictures in this post are all so cozy and Christmas-y, I love them! We used to have a little brick fireplace (it was actually exactly where I'm sitting right now), but it was quite old and made of crumbling brick, so it had to be removed. *sniff*
    Ooh, I like the idea of your new picture-reducing plan – yay for more posts! 😀 I've been trying to reduce the number of photos in my posts, too. I can't wait for your next post!

    -Clara ❤

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    1. AHHH THANK YOU! (*applauds loudly*) Thank you so much, Clara! I love the greenery too. 🙂 *sniff* That’s so sad about your fireplace. 😦
      Yay, I’m so glad you’re excited! I hope the fewer-pictures-more-posts thing works out, because I always get behind with my post ideas. XD Aww, and I can’t wait to post it! 🙂

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  5. So beautiful! I love how simple and fresh yet so festive and elegant everything looks! Y’all did a great job! Merry Christmas!

    Emma

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  6. Awww… I love seeing everything all decorated. You all did a beautiful job. My sister gave me a sled for my front porch this year. It makes me smile knowing that your family and ours both have sleds on our porches. Merry Christmas! I hope we’ll get to see you over the holiday. Your prior years of wreath making definitely have paid off 🙂

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    1. I was so happy to see your comment. 🙂 Thank you! Aww, it’s great that we both have sleds for decoration. I’ll bet yours looks beautiful! Ha ha, I was thinking the same thing – I’m glad we made all those wreaths in past years because the experience was most helpful for this. 😉 Yes, it would be wonderful to see you guys soon! Merry Christmas to you too!

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  8. This was really neat! It’s so cool how you guys can just go out, collect some natural stuff, and use them to decorate your house. We certainly can’t do that here. And that Christmas tree is so gorgeous! 😀 haha we haven’t even put ours up yet (dunno if we even are going to)

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  13. I remember your post about Christmas trees last year!! Oh my gosh, it doesn’t feel like long ago at all! Anyway, beautiful photos as always and merry almost Christmas 😊

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  15. Wow! Your house looks stunning with the real cedar branches, its soo warm and cozy. In our house, we just put gold tinsel around the banister rails and mantels, but I think cedar branches, pine-cones and lights look even more festive.

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  16. Your home is beautiful Allison! I like to keep things kind of minimal too…I appreciate ‘glam’ and glitzy Christmas decor but I don’t want to live with it. We keep 2 trees – one ‘family tree’ and one that I like to design for fun. A couple of lit cedars out front, a door wreath, and that’s the extent of my decorating. I need to have time to bake and craft 🙂 Thank you for sharing your home with us….Christmas blessings to you and yours!

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    1. Aww, thank you! Yes, I agree with you on the amount of Christmas decorations. 😉 Having two trees is a really neat idea. Your decorating sounds lovely to me, and ha ha, I understand that part – we still have a LOT of cookies to bake. XD It was my pleasure! Thank you for commenting, and the same to you! ❤

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  21. All the decorations look gorgeous! So warm and Christmassy. Your tree is incredible 0-0 unfortunately we had to go with a fake one this year :/

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  22. OH WOW! Your house looks so beautiful and gorgeous!! and all the greenery and twinkling lights. AHHHHHHH!!! I love all those old letters and photos you guys found. MERRYYYYYY CHHHRRRIIIISSSTTTMMMASSSS!! 🎄💒

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  29. Wishing you and your family THE MERRIEST CHRISTMAS and A YEAR OF BLESSINGS> The house looks so cozy. The tree is beautiful. We have our tree up and decorated. It is 8 feet.
    Marilyn

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    1. Aww, thanks. ❤ Merry Christmas to you as well, Marilyn! The house FEELS cozy, hee hee. Oh, that's lovely! I think 8 feet is a great height for a Christmas tree. 🙂

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  30. AHHH, SO PRETTY! I absolutely love the picture of the railing – I didn’t realize y’all had hung pictures, and it looks amazing! (Except one of them is crooked. I hope you fixed that. XD) And you mounted the TV! I love the runner sleds on the front porch. Everything is beautiful, dear, and I love it!

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    1. THANK YOU, DEAR. Aww, well thanks. I think it looks neat too. (Heh heh, you mean the letter inside, or the actual frame?) Yep, we did! It works great. THANK YOU AGAIN, ARIA. I’m so glad you like it!

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  33. Fitting all the ornaments on the tree is a difficult accomplishment to achieve. 😆 My family has a tradition where we each get a new one every year, so it keeps getting fuller. Our fake tree is super old and was leaning forward this year, so my dad tied some rope over the front to kept it from falling over. 🙂 Your decoration are gorgeous! I love the banister!

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  35. Ohhhh your house is beatiful!!
    Haha, our TV is on our mantle above the fireplace too! xP
    My fav Christmas decoration would have to be the tree. ❤ So beautiful.
    I made a wreath yesterday! There was a big branch that had fallen from a pine tree, so I used that. 🙂

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  36. Ohhhh your house looks beautiful, and it looks like y’all had so much fun memory-making time! Hope you have a Merry Christmas! ❤ (BTW, I absolutely LOVE your photography…you inspire me 😀 )

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  38. Pingback: Best of 2018 {Voting} – A Barefoot Gal

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