I love Christmastime! The decorations just make me feel warm and cozy and happy! I love being at home, baking cookies, listening to Christmas music and watching the sparkly glow of Christmas tree lights.

Here is what our little home is looking like lately:

Our tree is decorated in Mardi Gras beads that we caught ourselves from Mardi Gras parades our first year living in New Orleans. The ornaments are all silver and colored balls that I got at Target a couple years ago during their day after Christmas sales. We got our tree last year at Wal-Mart.

This year in the Target dollar aisle, I found packs of 8 ornaments that are the same as the ones on our tree, only slightly smaller, for $1. I bought 4 packs of them and hung them with lace crochet thread from our living room curtain rod and in our foyer windows as well.

I think they turned out so pretty! I love that they look kind-of like big, round, glittery snowflakes falling.

I also made a wreath for our front door. I used a straw wreath form and wrapped strips of linen fabric around it and then attached ribbons and Mardi Gras beads. I like that it echos the sparkly-ness of the hanging ornaments in the foyer and living room and the beads from the tree. I love when decor is all tied together somehow.

On our television table, I have my little Russian Christmas Dolls that Drew’s mom gave me a few years ago. The red snowflake throw blanket on the couch in the pictures above is from her as well.

Our coffee table is also festive, hosting a jar of candy canes and a couple tins of Christmas cookies.

I love the way our decorations look in our house! The only thing that I’m not so crazy about is that when we are sitting in the living room at night, we can barely see the lights from the tree since it is in the foyer. We put it in there because there was more room, but I sort-of wish we got to enjoy it a little more. I might do some re-arranging and move it around, but I haven’t decided where else we could put it really. We do get some reflections from it on the living room doors though:

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday time! I’ve gotten all my Christmas shopping done and only have a week left of finals before I’ll be home visiting with my family and baking more Christmas cookies, listening to lots of Christmas music, wrapping presents with them and enjoying my winter break! Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy some snow and snuggling up by the fireplace while I’m at home as well! I can’t count on those happening in New Orleans!

*****UPDATE*****

Of course after writing this, I pondered it more and decided I wanted to move the tree to enjoy it more. Our living room now looks like this:

I do still need to make a tree skirt for it. Oh well. Even though it may be a little cramped there, I love that we can enjoy the sparkly lights more from the living room. 🙂