Christmas Tour of Homes 2011

Welcome!  

First a little introduction for those popping in from the linky parties... My husband and I got married this past summer and had a beautiful beach wedding.  We are settled in North Carolina where my husband is a youth pastor at a local church.  We moved into a duplex a few months ago and have been enjoying settling into our first home.  We are loving our first Christmas season as a married couple!  We welcome you to take a look around at our Christmas decorations and hope you'll take a moment to look around our blog!

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Here's our front porch...

The porch is the only place where pops of red can be found in our decor.  I found this red berry wreath at a thrift store for $3.  I think I might have ran to it- I just knew someone else must have had their eye on this thing.

Last year I found this antique sled on Craigslist for $15.  I used some clearance ribbon I picked up last year after Christmas, some berries from the yard, and some evergreen branches that my friend gave me to spruce it up a bit.

My best friend gave me lots of branches that she and her husband cut from the bottom of their real Christmas tree so it would fit in their stand.  I was able to make swags for our windows as well as stick it around the house.  Thanks Heather- I've loved decorating with it!  Plus, I didn't have to buy wreaths!

When you come into our living room from the front porch, we have our Christmas tree up!  My favorite thing about our Christmas decor is the Christmas tree.  It is a mixture of handmade ornaments, hand me downs,  and ornaments I found on clearance the past couple of years.  The tree skirt is a huge wedding dress train!

The crowning jewel of the tree is the capriz shell look-alike garland.  It is actually made from wax paper!  You can find my tutorial for it here.  For under $2, I think it really "made" the tree.

For our gift wrapping, I went with simple kraft paper and simple bows.

I also printed graphics from The Graphics Fairy onto white lunch bags.  I used shredded book pages to stuff the bags and fill in around the gifts.

I planted paper whites in early November and have been able to enjoy the blooms this past week! 

Another favorite in our decorations are our Christmas stockings.  I made them from canvas drop cloth material I had leftover from my ottoman slipcover and leftover lining material from my custom bridesmaids dresses.  The vintage pin was my great grandmother's and I wore it on my wedding dress.  It is special and I wanted to showcase it.  

We don't have a mantle so I just hung them from the top of our bookshelf.

Above our nativity set, I wrote a verse on our chalkboard to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas.  

Several years ago, my parents bought me the Willow Tree nativity set and I love it.  I finally get to put it up in our home!

We decided to put the wise men across the room and move them closer to the nativity set throughout the season.  Because the wise men were not actually there the night of Jesus' birth, we want to leave our nativity up a little longer than our other Christmas decorations and finally have the wise men arrive.  Right now they are by the Christmas tree.

I also made a pillow based off my favorite Christmas book- The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree.

And just for fun, here is everything at night.  We love how cozy it is!

Thanks for stopping by!  We hope you enjoyed the tour!

I'm linking up to:

Paperwhites

Our paperwhite bulbs bloomed this past weekend.  They are beautiful!

However, I wasn't aware of the foul odor they have!  I have been moving them to the laundry room at night when we are sitting on the couch because they stink so bad.  Oh well, I still like them.

I put an olive wood nativity figurine beside the paperwhites on our end table.  I purchased it when I went to Israel and was in Jerusalem.  It has such special meaning to me and love the unique look it has.

Christmas Tablesetting

Here's our simple and natural holiday tablesetting

I made mini stockings to hold the silverware.  I think they add a special touch.  I also used the china I got from my grandmother's attic. 

 I reused the napkins and tablerunners from our wedding reception.  

To see our other Christmas decorations click here

I'm linking up to The Lettered Cottage

Wax Paper Garland Tutorial

 

I made a  faux capriz shell garland out of wax paper  for our Christmas tree.  I promised a tutorial and here it is!  This is one of my favorite DIY projects to date, and I hope you enjoy the tutorial!  if you have any questions just let me know!

Materials needed:

• Wax Paper
• Iron
• Towel
• Large circle paper punch (mine is 1.5 inches)
• Scissors
• Sewing machine and thread

(thanks to my sweet husband for taking these photos and video for me…they were taken on his iphone, so the quality isn’t very great.  But you’ll get the idea)

Step #1

Find a hard surface you can iron on and place a thin towel on top of the surface.  (I used our kitchen counter)

Step #2

Tear off 3 sheets of wax paper (as long as you want, but I just did about 2 foot sections at a time). 

Step #3

Line the sheets up evenly and place on towel. Begin lightly ironing over the three sheets.  They will begin to fuse together. 

It will look like this one ironed

Step #5

Trim the ends so that they are even.

Step #6

Begin to fold the wax paper back and forth in an accordion style fold.  (Making sure that the folded surface is large enough for your circle punch)

Step #7

Taking half of the accordion fold at a time, begin to punch out your circles.

Step #8

Once all of your circles are punched, look through to see if any need to be trimmed

Step #9

Begin sewing your garland together on your sewing machine.  It is easier to just show you than explain it, so we did a short video clip to help you understand.

 

 

Once you’ve sewn all your circles, you can make more cirlces to make longer garland strands or cut and make several smaller.  I opted for several smaller because I am too impatient and wanted to see what they looked like on the tree!

I was inspired by these this tutorial for a garland and this tutorial for a chandelier

Oh Christmas Tree!

I love our white themed Christmas tree!  I have collected white and silver ornaments over the last couple of years on clearance after Christmas for when Jeremy and I got married.  So we had a few to put on the tree, and then I also made some ornaments.

My favorite part of the tree is the garland.  It has a capriz shell look to it, don't you think?  It is actually made from wax paper! Here is my tutorial for making your own wax paper garland

Here are some of the ornaments I had bought over the past couple of years.

The olive tree wood ornaments above were some that I bought on my trip to Israel.  They are so special to put on the tree, and remind me of my time there, as well as the true meaning of Christmas.  

Another one of my favorite parts is the tree skirt.  It is in fact a wedding dress train!  If you've been a reader for a while, you may remember this post where I mentioned using it as a tree skirt.  I worked at a bridal shop when I lived in VA, and we received this huge wedding dress train as a donation.  We couldn't sell it, so I I took it home and made a couple of things from it!  

I think it works great as a tree skirt! 

I only wish that I had some way to get those wrinkles out- any suggestions for how to get wrinkles out of real silk?  I tried to steam it, and I just made brown spots.  

Christmas Inspiration and Preview

I feel like it has been forever since I last posted!  I have been very busy with the holidays and decorating and crafting and such.  I have so many things to post about, but just haven't gotten the time to actually sit down and write them.  I've made homemade turkey stock, frozen Thanksgiving leftovers, cleaned, sewing, and more.

But most of all, I've been decorating our home for Christmas, as I'm sure many of you have as well.  I LOVE Christmas.  Our normal family tradition is to put up the decorations and tree on Thanksgiving Day after we eat.  But I begged Jeremy to let me put up ours early and so we started putting things up the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I was so surprised at how much more I enjoyed Thanksgiving because of it!  I wasn't nearly as rushed or stressed on Thanksgiving day, I was just able to enjoy our time with family and our decorations already being mostly up.

I have made Christmas swags with fresh greenery, made ornaments, made stockings, made and bought gifts, put up the Nativity, and added lights here and there.

If you follow me on Pinterest, I'm sure you've seen some of the Christmas photos I have pinned.  I have been inspired by so much this year and we decided to go with the natural Christmas theme.  Here are some of my inspiration photos...

Image Sources

Here is a little preview picture of our Christmas tree.  I'll share the rest of our decorations later this week when I finish them all.  I still have a banner to make, a couple of pillows to sew, and one more stocking to finish up. 

Stay tuned for better, non-phone photos :)