Christmas Cheer in the Kitchen............

Snowman family # 2

Here is corner of my kitchen. I have a lantern with a red light in it/and my snowman doily. I bought the frame. I wish I could say I made it/but Terry's Village has such cute ones already made for you. I put Aaron's last years Christmas pix in it.

This is a collage of my Christmas boxes I collected. The snowman one is my favorite/I end up keeping it up all winter long. I also have a pix of our candles in the window. We live in a traditional colonial style home/and the thing to do is the candle in each window. I also add a wreath onto every window in the front. This is the easiest decorating for light on the outside of the home. My hubby is glad...as we have a two story home and don't want him to fall off the roof. OUCH! So, we put the candles in the window and we never have to hang lights outside. We do have lighted garland on the doorway but no climbing involved on that!!!





Here is a cheery site when cooking a hard meal......some cheery towels hanging on the stove. I got these at Marshal Fields ...and have several for each holiday. I love their towels. Marshal Fields is no more(I think their Macy's now?? or is it one of those big stores)? Anyway, when I bought these It was still called : Dayton's. LOL! Love their towels at the Marketplace.

Another collage of various items.....My plate stand(if you keep up with the blogs I had, this was also in my Fall decor pixs)I change out the plates for each holiday. These are my Christmas plates...and for some reason I ended up with the same Angel plate. So I display the extra one near my stove on a plate stand. I also have a potpourri log cabin. I rarely use the potpourri part of it/but I put a light bulb underneath to shine in so the windows and doors aglow with light. The last pix is my HOT PAD.....that matches the towel set. The snowman motif was just too irresistible.

Speaking of Irresistible........check these out! These were the VERY FIRST Christmas decor items I ever bought. There was a little craft store where I use to get my hair cut. Don't ask, I know that bizarre....craft store and hair place all in one. However, they were selling these and I just thought they were so fun. I am so super glad I bought them. They are going to be the most favorite Christmas item we ever bought. My Son Just LOVES them. I knew I bought them way back when for a reason! He loves lights in general but he just loves the bright big lights on these...and loves Rudolph and Frosty(as he calls them). This one is Rudolph appropriately named because his nose blinks off and on(Red).





Here is Frosty! I like his pipe that flickers with a flaming light.





A collage with snowman figures and a angel night light. Have lots of "let it snow" signs all over. I wish it would around here. We don't have a white Christmas YET! They said something about snowing all day long on Friday. Here is hoping!!! Christmas just isn't Christmas without the white stuff when you live in Minnesota that is. It just ugly outside, brown and cold....blah!


This is the end of the kitchen Christmas decor. I think the dining room may be next. Stay tuned, more UFFDAH moments and Christmas decor to come. Keep chuggin the eggnog and sing a Yuletide song of JOY! PEACE!

Christmas Cheer in the Hallway........

My little Snowman Family





Here is my entry way when you walk in.......We decorated the doorways with Heavy garland and bows. It's alot of work but we have it organized and thought out every year. All bins are labeled and mark and we have the hardware to hang everything in the bins with the garland. It was so well organized and use to the routine that this year it went pretty well /putting up the garland. My husband put it all up by himself. Really great!



More views of the heavy garland/and of course...the MISTLETOE! Every year we have to hang the mistletoe for my sister-in- law and my bro-in-law/so they can "smooch" under the mistletoe. They love having an excuse to Kissy it up! ~hee~



This plaque is in the hallway too. Love the fun picture on the hanging. Love the little wood sleigh hanging!





Some more bigger wood standing plaques in my hallway entry. I love the Santa one. It was my first large Christmas items I bought. I get alot of my Holiday stuff thru Terry's Village. Love that store......it's got super cute items to buy and they are very inexpensive and I always get FREE shipping. This Santa and Snowman are from Terry's Village. The snowman plaque the welcome sign he is holding actually flips around and has a personal message on it: our names. I can flip it over and it will have our last name on it.





Christmas collage of some of my hallway items. The chenille snowman is really in my family room but the rest of the pixs are of the hallway decor. I love that chenille snowman. He is in alot of my family photos for Christmas. We took alot of pixs of Aaron with that snowman already. The 3 hallway wood plaques in my entry are pictured on the collage too. Oddly enough, I have alot of plaques that say, "let it snow"~hee~ Last photo on the collage is my snowman & Bulb sleigh on my entry table. I have some candelabras on that table and with all the glitter on the snowman and the shine of the bulbs....it just makes for a fun entry item to walk past.





This is the first thing you see as you walk in the entry. This is my Holiday welcome area. I try to put something in this spot for every holiday. When there isn't a holiday I just put my bunnies on it with various items. I either put a wreath or a picture up there for the holidays. This is my Christmas picture. I bought this from Home interiors party. Love the snowmen on it. Very whimsical pix.....and I put some garland and my snowman next to the pix.




Just another larger view of the snowman...isn't he cute? I think I got him at that round barn with the other snowman that look similar. That's it for the hallway. Coming next: the kitchen and dining room.....whooo wee the anticipation! Have a good one and don't eat too many holiday cookies and fudge!

Christmas Cheer in the Family Room...........

Here is the Christmas Decor pixs I promised. This pix is of our Christmas Wreath on the front door.

The pix of the little tree is in our family computer room. It's on top the computer room hutch. It's adorned with Snowmen ornaments and wood candy canes on top.

The rest of the pixs are of the family room Christmas decor fun.



Here is the family room pixs...........I started with my mantel. This is a side view of our mantel with the garland and red berries. I also put up my stocking holders & stockings on the mantel but the stockings are not pictured. I broke one of my stocking holders/and took the stockings down. I was so worried Aaron would break one/and here I am the one that broke it. Bummer!!! I was taking a stocking down and the stocking holder fell right onto the bricks below. SMASH! Doug said he can glue it back together. I love those Snowman stocking holders. I think I may never hang the stockings anymore. Maybe just put them on the steps or something?



Here is a collage of my snowman collection. Snowman is a big
theme in our home for the holidays. I love the two bigger stuffed
snowmen in the collage below. I bought them awhile back at the
round barn(a REAL round barn full of antiques and collectibles).
Very fun place to shop.

The other pix in the collage are my snowman friends on my mantel. I put the tall one there to offset the Christmas Angel(I have on the other side of the mantel).

I love the little chunk of wood snowman. I call him stumpy. LOL! He just looks like a "stumpy". I really call him stumpy because he made just out a small square chunk of wood-with a hat on and drawn in snowman face. I don't even know where I got stumpy.... I think maybe the round barn too but I can't remember??? I got the tall snowman from Herbergers one year. Ilike that he is tall and love his striped legs.

The other pix is our Santa ......I put him on our end table in our family room. Can't only have snowmen...right? I like Santa, I call him Marty the Santa. He reminds me of a Marty I know. ~hee~




This Christmas Angel is sitting on our mantel too. I love this Angel!!! I bought it along time ago....up north in Chisholm, MN. That is my In laws home town.......and we used to go up all the time and visit .....Doug's Grandma and Grandpa and Relatives. This angel reminds me of that area and all the family that means so much to us! I got this Angel from a cute store in Chisholm after Christmas sale....for a really great deal. She is my favorite Christmas Decoration(and I have many)!!! I love the little chalk board she is holding that reads: Merry Christmas. So cute!
I love the vintage folk art look too!





Finally the "star" of the family room.......our family TREE. I have Many trees around the house at Christmas. This is our main tree. Doug absolutely hates putting this tree up! It's an older one and doesn't have the "lights already on it". So he has to mess with light strings.......and put every branch on the tree(no easy steps to this tree). We love this tree tho. It would be hard to get rid of it. It is so realistic looking, looks like an outdoor blue fir tree. Even has pine cones on it. It is a real pain to put up every year.

We don't do real trees in our home. I am too freaked out about fire hazards ...everything we have is artificial.

I like artificial but I am a routine gal...and like the same thing year after year(lol)! Every year we just get it out again and put it away to be used the next year.





I change the look of the tree from year to year. I use to put ribbon on it. Now I put the ornaments and made it more red and put berries all over. I like having more traditional looking tree for the family room. My other trees in the house are fun and have snowmen on them. So I wanted this tree to be more traditional looking.

I use to put loony tunes and such on my tree. LOL! However, I out grew that and wanted a more "adult" tree. Don't get me wrong.... I love LOONY TUNES and that kind of stuff. I just wanted a more decor friendly tree. I put the loony tunes to use on Aaron's tree. I will post pixs of that in some of my next blogs soon.

Here are some views of ornaments adorning this family room tree. As you can see all our somewhat red, more traditional looking in nature. We use cluster of red berry lights on the tree/and the rest of the lights are white. I stuff red berries out of the tree to make it look more "nature" looking. As our tree is a blue fir looking tree and has pine cones on it/so the berries go well with that theme. I even have 3 big berry branches with bird nest on them.

OK, I must admit I "ripped" off this idea from the Seasonal Concepts store....but I just loved that tree they had with berries and nests.... in the tree. SO I did my own version of it. Seasonal concepts is where we bought the red berry lights, and the berry branches etc........The red berry lights were spendy....so we only put enough to cover the front of the tree(good decorating tip). If your tree faces a wall don't bother decorating the backside. That way you have more to work with on the part of the tree you see. Ours faces a window but you don't see much threw that window....so only have the white lights on it in the back. IT works and it saves $$$$. On that note ....I will leave you with the pixs of my ornaments and what they mean to us.




My wood bird ornament.....love this! Got it from Franks
Nursery. Every year I would buy a few wood ornaments
for the tree. This one is a favorite. Love how big it is and
the bird is so vintage looking/even tho it's new.




Love this snowman.......i got this for FREE. Sorta.....it was
on a poinsettia plant bought one year. I thought it was so
cute and kept it. It's actually a pick they put into plants
to jazz them up for the holidays. There is another tip: don't
throw out the small things....they could be treasures for years
to come!!!




I bought this snowman at Target Last year. I thought he
would look good on the tree. I try to buy a new ornament
every year.



I wanted to make my tree more Red theme....so I picked up
these felt pillow ornaments. I really like them. Easy and big
they take up some space on the tree...and are great filler for
the tree. I also bought these at Seasonal concepts. The wood
snowman is another wood ornament I picked up from Franks
Nursery. I miss that store.....most are out of business around
here. I was our holiday shopping store(for lights and plants etc).
We miss it!!!!!



I like this ornament........I had too many red ornaments
but wanted to keep my tree "red" ...this ornament screamed
to be on the tree. It is red but only has red on it and the rest
is a soft white/cream color. Worked great for the tree. I think
I got this at Target too???




Here is the berry branch with the bird nest-
noticed I put my birdie ornament on it~hee~
worked great for that! That ornament has
special meaning...as it was our first ornament
as a married couple. 1994.....our first Christmas
together!!! We will always cherish that ornament.
Thanks to Jane for giving us such a wonderful unique
wedding gift. She gave it to us for a wedding gift. It's a
gift we use every year.....and maybe pass on to our child
someday. Another good tip: if you don't know what to
give people for gifts on those special occasions/ornaments
are great.....people cherish those for years.




Finally the end and what better way to end at the TOP
OF THE TREE. Here is our topper. I gave up trying
to put a topper on the tree. I can never find one I like....
I even put a gigantic bow up there one year(LOL)! Finally,
after looking at stores for inspiration and looking in magazines
I come to the conclusion that we didn't ever really need a topper.
So that has stuck with us.....no topper! I try to fill the tree instead
at the top with extra berries, and glimmer objects(like a wonderful
Christmas bulb I got from Sylvia-our family friend). IT very breakable
and just the most beautiful bulb you ever seen. SO it's safe at the top
and it puts out a wonderful glimmer from the lights bouncing off it.
I also put this dove I have....it shiny too and has glitter all over it.

Hope you like the images.....I will have more to come.....Happy Holidays!