Creating Your Own Winter Wonderland

Christmas is the best time to decorate – am I right? Almost every decoration you buy is vibrant and going down the Christmas aisle at any store automatically makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. I like to buy a few new things every year because my style tends to change as time goes on, but the one thing I always incorporate are my Christmas antiques. My husband and I got married a few days before Christmas and went a little crazy buying antiques to decorate the tables, so we have quite a few. They always look extra special this time of year, and remind me of the beautiful December night we got married. Best day ever.

While I love the old look, I enjoyed adding a little color to the house this year to make it a fun atmosphere for our daughter. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous decorating now that she’s very mobile and most of the time determined to touch everything that’s not hers. Luckily, she’s been great about leaving everything as is, and honestly hasn’t touched a thing, which I really appreciate because decorating is such a fun hobby for me. She’s the best.

The area we decorate most throughout the year is our entryway. If you missed my post on our fall entryway table, you can view how we decorated, here. This year, we used antiques, including antique postcards, our wooden nativity set that my in-laws got us one year for Christmas, and a lot of Santa items (including my DIY snow globe) to fill the space.

The media cabinet my husband and his friend made is new this year, so we got to utilize it and hung our stockings from the sliding door bar, which we love since we don’t have fireplace. We put fake snow and some furry creatures on top to give it a woodsy look.

We also put my husband’s Christmas village from childhood on our book shelf. I love being able to incorporate his decorations from when he was little because he loves this time of year so much and I know it made him happy to see some of the decorations he grew up with.

This year also marked the first time we bought a real tree! Woo! We love it, it’s the perfect tree in our book, except for the fact that it’s not fragrant (what did we do wrong?!). We’ve been burning our evergreen candle quite often to pretend it fills the house with a fresh pine smell. 🙂 To add a finishing touch to our family room, I draped a banner I made along our wall. I made it out of cardboard paper and Christmas card stock I found at Hobby Lobby. Maybe I’ll do a DIY post on it next year?

Of course, I couldn’t forget to add a couple of Christmasy elements to the dining area. I added some fake garland to the table, some greenery to our shelves and made another banner to put on our dining room wall.