It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Irish house! This is our first year celebrating Christmas as husband and wife and the first year celebrating Christmas in our new house. Not only that, we have the honor of hosting the Christmas day celebration for my entire mom's side of the family (what have I gotten myself into?!) So, to prepare, we began decorating a little early this year.

We officially put up our big tree on Thanksgiving and had so much fun decorating it together. We had a mix of ornaments this year that we have accumulated throughout the years. I tend to prefer silver ornaments and found a lot of cute word ornaments that say things like "Blessed", "Hope", and "Joy". I should have taken a close-up picture but we did add some twig & berry garland to the tree which worked really well to fill in the spaces we didn't have ornaments. We can't find a tree-topper that will actually stay on the top of the tree. We are noticing that our tree is quite flimsy. Might be time for a new one next year! Here are some decorating shots and the finished product:







I love that we have a house this year to decorate. Ever since the first Christmas Pottery Barn catalogue arrived at my doorstep I have been thinking about how I would decorate. I had been saving all of our wedding gift cards to PB for that moment. I did manage to spend them all in one online shopping spree but realized that so many of the ideas I liked in the catalogue could be replicated for wayyyyy less. So, I took my trusty Christmas decorating guide to Michael's and alas, our home became a Christmas wonderland! I really should have taken more close-up pictures of the mantle but I decorated with a lot of candles, berries, twigs, and miniature bells. Thank you PB for all your inspiration!





We put our main Christmas tree in our sunken living room/library area this year so that we didn't have to move around any of our furniture in our living room. Plus, that room has carpet which makes for more cozy gift opening and family gathering on Christmas morning. Since we spend most of our time in the family room, we decided to put a baby 4-foot tree in that room. Of course, the theme of that room is deep plumb and the tree was no exception to that. We found purple and gold ornaments to match the room to create the perfect miniature tree.



I'm bound to decorate more, especially considering a new pottery barn catalogue arrived in the mail yesterday :) But for now, there's a little taste of the Irish house this Christmas!