Christmas Decorations 2014

This year was a pretty exciting year to decorate. It was our first Christmas in our new house! I'm not a huge fan of knick-knacky decorations, but pre-lit garland and decorated trees are my jam. And you'll see them both in excess. Some more sneak peaks around the new house too if you are into that.

First up: the tree in my home office.  It's gold, it's rocking some lime and purple and iridescent white balls, and some purple snowflakes. I love looking past my monitors to see this guy all lit up sitting on top of our craigslist poker table find.

This white guy - you might recognize him from the dining room of our apartment, but this year he is hanging out in the Nursery.  Complete with emerald green and royal blue balls blue snowflakes, and some rustic little critters from Grandma.

I'm a little partial to our fake green tree in the family room.  We always had an assortment of traditional Scandinavian ornaments on our tree growing up but this guy is all Norway, all the way. Straw ornaments, Norwegian flags, and our Julenissen. We've even got our Fair Isle ornaments that we picked up in Oslo last year (November 2013).

There is more garland in this room - surrounding this huge window as well as our sliding glass doors to the back patio.  But I'll show you around the family room a little more in another post.

And of course, our REAL TREE in the living room.  In case you were wondering, no I did not realize that the top of this tree was seemingly chopped off when we picked it out, nor did I realize that it would look so short and stout in this room. And no, we don't own a star to make it look taller (it's called an illusion, Michael). But next year folks, next year! I will have a properly fitting tree for this room. Until then, I think this guy turned out just fine.  We've got the majority of our sentimental ornaments on this tree and I used gold and aqua to tie into some of the other furniture in the room. And yes. Lots and lots of pre-lit garland.

Can we talk about how ginormous those stockings are? They are beautiful (from Pottery Barn Kids), but I did not realize they would be this big. In a few years someone is going to expect to get these filled with toys, and Mama is not happy about this. He is going to have to settle for half (nay, two thirds!) of it to be stuffed with tissue paper. We will make up some story so he believes that is how it all works, I'm sure.

And some of our special ornaments from our trips  and significant happenings over the years are on our "real tree". This has become my favorite way to memorialize these vacations (and when I can't find actual ornaments, key chains become great ornaments and people are none the wiser except when you blab about on a public blog). In no particular order:

Read about it here.

My Tri-Kayla 30th Birthday/Cinqo De Kayla/Kentucky Derby Weekend in 2012

Our wedding.

I recently posted about our Honeymoon to South Africa here.

We went to a falconry on our second mini-honeymoon in Manchester VT

Duh.

Florida in 2010 

Vegas in 2013

Forgive me for indulging in listing out where our ornaments are all from - some day (probably too soon) I won't be able to remember what year we did what so it's nice to have it all in one spot.

Technically, I put up pre-lit garland on our front porch, however, there are no outlets outside so we've never been able to turn it on. After a few futile attempts to get electricity outside we have decided to wait to add an outlet when we redo the siding this coming spring. We are already tinkering with ideas for decorating outside the house next year, and let's just say Tom has already mentioned using his raspberry pi to match up lights and music. And you thought four Christmas trees was excessive.