2010 Holiday Decor

I've been enjoying looking at people's holiday decorations around blogland recently and was inspired to post some pictures of my own.

Here's a quick glimpse of our holiday decorations this year:

Our mantel is not too different from last year, but it does look more lush, and that would be thanks to my teenage daughter who created this all by herself.*

*This is the dichotomy of being a mom to teens- you're either crying 'cause they're growing up or you're doing a little happy dance 'cause they're helping, and creating, and well...growing. Ugh.

And here is my ode to the December issue of Better Homes and Gardens. There was a feature that showed shelves on the sides of the fireplace that were simply decorated with wreaths and boxwood sprigs in the white pottery.

I LOVE this kind of stuff because I have lots of boxwood bushes and my shelves always have white pottery.

Makes my frugal heart go pitter-patter.

My daughter added the little houses I painted long ago that I wrote about last year.

Our tree is silver, white, and gold. I added some lime green balls and wanted to add some purple balls, but haven't found any yet.

So right now we have one single purple ball ornament on the tree, which looks a tad lonesome.

And guess what we have under the tree?

Yep, I still put a train under the tree even though our kids are teens. I like how it looks, and since we don't put presents under the tree until Christmas Eve (to keep the focus on Jesus and not Santa and gifts...), it doesn't look so forlorn under there.

Besides, I do still have a nephew and nieces that like to play with the train. So that counts, right?

This was the new thing I did this year (which was sure hard to get a good picture of!). I usually have a larger wreath in this window, with smaller wreaths in the windows beside it. I kept the smaller wreaths, but added these balls at varying heights in the larger window.

I'm liking it.

Except that I'd like some of the balls to be purple...

Outside I purchased a $7.99 wreath (that was a bit sparse, so I stuck in some fir branches to fill it out) and added the sled that Brian used as a boy.

Simple, yet festive. This works for me, since we have lights on the house to add to the decorations.

I do love this time of year and hope you all are having fun with decorations, too!

-Jami