Other Christmas Scenes Around the House

Last week I shared our living room decked out for the holidays. Today I'll share a few other spots that got some holiday touches.  Our theme is slap lights, garland and wreaths on it. Boom. Christmas decorating done.

Let's start outside.  We need a few more lights.  Nate is sad that most of these strands are on their last leg. I'm happy because we can switch to warm lights!  The mixing of cool and warm makes me twitchy.

I bought a big strand of fresh garland and chopped it up and threw it all over the house. Our house smells amazing.  And there are pine needles everywhere. (Thanks goodness for the Roomba!)

Our dining room gets our family memories tree. I love it so much. There are ornaments from Nate and I's childhood, our wedding and now Clark's ornaments. It makes me so happy.  And sappy.

I always try to keep the decor to a minimum during the holidays because our kitchen takes a holiday baking beating and I don't need anything else in my way!  

Here's a large sneak peek of a project we completed this year in our basement.  I told you, nothing is safe from garland. 

Lastly, here's our tree all lit up at night. We're actually going to have to turn the house lights on again in January.

Did you get all of your decorating done? How about shopping? And baking?!?  I'm good to go except for the baking!

Need Help Getting Dressed

I'll be back this week with the rest of our house tour but I wanted to pop in quick and share my secret to dressing myself. (Don't worry, you'll soon see that I'm not turning this into a fashion blog.)

Before I had Clark I loved shopping for clothes. I had plenty of time to browse and try on clothes.  Shopping was fun. After having Clark, my free time was drastically reduced and dressing myself quickly fell to the bottom of the priority list.

I then discovered the Putting Me Together Clothing Challenges. I did the Fall challenge in October and it totally changed my perspective on buying clothing and putting together outfits.  The sign up for the Winter Challenge is today and if you're in a clothing rut, I encourage you to join in on the fun! 

Aubrey is the blogger behind Putting Me Together.  She puts together a capsule wardrobe (with a shopping list) and 40+ outfits from that wardrobe.  I have totally embraced the capsule wardrobe life.  I found with the Fall challenge that I didn't feel the need to continuously shop because I already had a ton of cute clothes. I think having the capsule and the outfit guide really showed me that I could do more with way less.  I also LOVED the daily outfit guide.  Decision fatigue is real and not having to think about what I need to wear is truly amazing.  Borderline life changing. (Not a dramatization.)

Here are a few of my outfits from the Fall challenge.

Here's a sample of some of the outfits are in the Winter Challenge. I got the full outfit guide this morning and I'm obsessed.

via Putting Me Together

Part of the Challenge includes access to a Facebook group that I love.  Everyone in the group is so kind. It's refreshing to be part of a positive online community!  You can get outfit feedback, find good deals, etc.  Super fun.

As a previous challenge member, we got early access to this challenge's shopping guide and I've already put some items to good use!

I just thought I'd share this little secret of mine!  You can join in on the fun here!  

*Totally not sponsored. Affiliate links for the program are included but only because I'm a big fan of the Putting Me Together Challenges!*

Holiday Home Tour 2017 (Living Room)

It's Christmas house tour time!

We've had our halls mostly decked since the weekend before Thanksgiving.  It's been our tradition for the past 5 years or so.  We travel for Thanksgiving so we decorate the Sunday before and just pretend it's not there until we leave mid-week (because who wants to overshadow Thanksgiving? Mmmm, pie.). And then we come home to a Winter wonderland!  

(Do you spy the dog looking for leftovers in Clark's booster seat?  Nothing but professional photos around these parts.)

Part of couch buying decision making process included making sure we had room our Christmas tree.  It works really well in this spot.  First holiday crisis avoided.

We've got the decorating of the 12' tree down to a science. We did have a fuse issue that left the top half of our tree dark for a few days but all is well again. Phew. Second holiday crisis avoided.

The ornaments are nothing fancy and there's a concentration of them unevenly spaced at the bottom. Everyone asks how we keep Clark out of the tree.  We have a few kid friendly ornaments picked out that Clark is allowed to move around. He's a rule follower like his parents so this is working to our advantage. He keeps repeating "Mine decorated that. Hang the ornaments."  It's pretty darling.  He is quite bossy though and demands the lights on during his awake hours.  No arguments here.

We splurge on fresh garland for the mantel.  The smell is worth every single penny. Nate and I both agree it's not Christmas until there is pine smelling garland in the house!  And a mess of pine needles on the floor.

I really hate clutter so I replace a few items that normally live on our bookshelves with some vintage finds. Like that elf.  He's not one of those hipster trouble making elves. He's old. And doesn't move and has zero magical powers. I will not succumb to elf peer pressure.  (This is more of a pep talk for my future self.)

Ike is dreaming of dog bones and day where he isn't bossed around by a toddler. 

I'll share some other spots around the house later this week or next. Until then here's a peek into our kitchen. 

SHOP THIS POST/RELATED POSTS

I hope you enjoyed the tour! I'll be back with more once I'm done watching like ten terrible Christmas romance movies on Netflix (Hit me up with your recommendations)!  I'm clearly terribly busy so this post may need to wait until next week.