Christmas Tour of Homes

Welcome!  If you are a regular reader or are stopping over from The Nester's Tour of Homes I am glad that you're here!  I want to show you my favorite decorations around our house.  Since I have an almost 7 month old didn't have time to go all out on decorations this year so I stuck with items that are special to me. 

We'll start first in our den with our mantle.

I went with a simpler mantle than last year mostly because of time but also because I didn't want garland leaves falling on the floor and Charlotte eating them!  I got the stockings from The Bobbins Nest on Etsy.  I'm planning on monnogramming them but haven't had time yet.

The nativity that I always center on our mantle is so special to us.  We bought it in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on our honeymoon.  It is a beautiful pewter set that I absolutely adore.  It looks fantastic year after year and is timeless.  Plus it's so special because it was literally our first Christmas decoration for our new family that we purchased together.

This nativity is a new (old) addition this year.  My great-grandmother, Granny, painted this for me when I was a baby.  My Mom always displayed it at home and this year she decided to pass it down to Charlotte for her to enjoy.  One Christmas after we got our first dog, Peanut, he decided that one of the wise men looked tasty and so one wise man has a corner that's been nibbled on.  But, to me, that just makes it even more charming!

We have a lot of built in bookcases in the den and I love to display pictures and special memento's on their shelves.  That doesn't stop for Christmas! I simply moved a few items into cabinets for the holiday and display another nativity and other fun items like "chocolate" Santa's, our Elf on the Shelf, and these fun items.

These cute paintings were painted by Kim at Endless Possibilities.  She did this set last year as a limited edition.  Please excuse the coloring of the picture.  I was taking pictures last night and I couldn't get this one to come out right!

I love this Santa pillow.  I have a second one also in another bookshelf.  My grandmother, Gramme, cross stitched these for us and gave them to me at one of my wedding showers.  They are so special!  I don't display them on the couch or in a chair because one day I found Luca resting his head on one.  I don't want anything to happen to them so they are safe on the shelves!

This is our tree in the den.  I filled it with ornaments that Granny made.  I think they are beautiful!

This is our tree in our foyer.  If you read my blog regularly you'll know that this is the second tree that we put up this year due to the first one falling over.  You can read all about it here.  We ended up going and getting a 12 foot artificial tree and we will use this one at least for the foreseeable future.  This tree is decorated with special ornaments to us like our Christopher Radko collection and special family ornaments.  However, after winning a blog giveaway on Happily Ever After and receiving some advice from Stephanie to fill in the tree with a theme I filled in the tree with an assortment of red and green ornaments.

Each year we get our Christmas card picture put on an ornament and put the ornament on our tree.  I hope one day to have a whole tree full of Christmas card pictures!  This was the first ornament that Jason and Charlotte put on the original tree this year!  (Post updated to note that I order these from Exposures magazine)

I am so excited about this ornament! We took Charlotte to a paint your own pottery store the Saturday after Christmas and made this ornament with her handprint.  Although she screamed bloody murder while we were making the ornament, we definitely made memories and a keepsake that we can treasure!  I am looking forward to adding many more ornaments for Charlotte to our tree over the years!

Each year my Mom gives me and my brother (and now Jason) a Christpher Radko ornament that represents something important that happened this year.  This ornament is a church that Mom gave me the year that we got married.

Growing up we always had a pickle ornament on our tree.  So when we got married I looked and purchased a pickle for our tree.  Last year we hosted a Christmas party with our best friends and we had an ornament swap.  One of the ornaments that we brought was a pickle because it's such a long-standing tradition with our family that I assumed everyone knew about it.  Not so! We were actually the one people in the room to have ever heard about a Pickle ornament.  So today I googled it for y'all and it appears that it is a German tradition.  You can read more about it on Bronner's website along with see their pickle ornament selection!

In our family there was always a pickle present and whoever remembered the pickle first and found it got to open the present.  However, the pickle present was almost always something for the whole family.  Like the year that Santa brought our first computer (it was in probably 5 HUGE cow (Gateway) boxes! How long ago was that?!?!) the pickle present was a joystick for the computer.  Charlie and I always had friendly competition searching for the pickle.  I can't wait until Charlotte can look for the pickle on our tree!

Another special ornament is our "victory" ornament.  When we were little either Charlie or I made this stained glass elephant ornament.  In our family we determined that we would hang that little elephant on our tree every year that we beat Auburn.  Over the past ten years the little elephant has had to go back in his box more often than not but for the past two years our victory elephant (and our new victory ornament) have hung proudly in a place of honor on our tree! Roll Tide! :)

Thank you so much for visiting the tour of our home decorated for Christmas!  We wish you and your family a very merry Christmas!  One that is full of love, laughter, friends and family.  One where we stop and remember the baby in the manger and all that He has done for us!

Merry Christmas!