it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

While we've been slowly pulling decorations from storage in the basement since Thanksgiving, our house is finally complete with Christmas decor. On Saturday morning Scott and I selected our Christmas tree while Morgan kept Andrew entertained.

We quickly found the one. In fact, it was the first tree we looked at. Love it!

Morgan had been looking forward to decorating the tree for some time, so hanging ornaments on Sunday afternoon while Andrew napped was incredibly fun for her. "Oooooh, look at THIS one!" she would say each time I handed her a new one.

When Andrew woke up, he was most fascinated with the star on top. He's been really great so far with respecting the Christmas tree.

In addition to stringing the lights on, my job was also to hang the beads. They need to drape on the branches just so! And I enjoy putting on that finishing touch every year.

 

A favorite vintage ornament!

As always we have our garland over the French doors. This is by far my favorite of all the Christmas decorations.

Our stockings are hung on the IKEA floating shelves with care. That is also where our nativity is displayed.

I also stumbled across this neat find while blog hopping the other day. I absolutely love the design and the message, so I printed one for us and framed it just last night. It's hanging in our awkward formerly-a-window-before-the-addition nook above the basement steps.

I kept some Christmas tree branches, too, for a vase and thought this area might be a nice substitute for a mantle since there's no fireplace in this house. But it needs something more, don't you think?

And here's our minimalist outdoor decorations: two wreaths on the garage with garland over the front door. Still haven't figured out how to take a great picture of Christmas lights, but it really does look pretty at night with the Christmas tree peeking through the front left window!

All that's left to do is shop, bake, wrap and celebrate!