I'm sure you're familiar with the Twelve Days of Christmas, but this year at our house, we're celebrating with Twelve Feet of Christmas. Twelve Feet of Christmas Tree, that is. For years I've been saying we were getting a new Christmas tree, and for years we ended up putting up the same ol' dinky one that looked teensy tiny in our 11-foot living room. Well, this year in our new house that has a two-story living room, I put my foot down and insisted that we buy a bigger, taller Christmas tree.
Behold, all twelve feet of our new Christmas tree, pictured below at nighttime and in daylight.
Y'all, it's big. Like, really big. As in, the step stool didn't even get me close to the top. Nor did the six-foot ladder. The eight-foot ladder wasn't much better. It took me almost two full hours just to fluff up all the branches, and then I had to get Doc to take down the top 5 feet so I could decorate them on the ground and then put them back up. It was quite the feat! And it still doesn't have a bow or star or anything at the top because we haven't felt like dragging the ladder back out to put one up there.
Know how many ornaments it takes to fill up a twelve-foot tree? A lot. Like, a lot a lot. More than we have. So if you were to come over and examine our tree, you'd find that there's nary an ornament on the backside. Nope, only the front got decorated. Maybe next year we can buy some filler ornaments.
But, as painful and dreadful as it was to get it up and fluffed and decorated, it was so worth it. I mean, it's so big! And pretty! And sparkly! And magical! Yea, I just went there. Our tree is magical. And I love it.
I also love that I already had my presents wrapped before our tree arrived, so as soon as we got the tree up I could stick all the pretty packages underneath it. For the first time ever, I actually wrapped my gifts in a color scheme. I've had intentions of doing this in the past but I always get hit up to buy wrapping paper from the kids and end up with mismatched rolls of paper, but this year that didn't happen. I used a lot of just plain brown packing paper to wrap with and mixed in some solid rolls of red. I love it! (Sorry for the darkness of this photo.)
I kinda carried the same theme throughout the rest of the house with my other Christmas decorations - kind of a casual, burlap-y theme, if you will. We still have lots of empty rooms and empty spaces, so there weren't lots of places to put things. I decided to keep it kind of simple. In fact, I still have two or three boxes of decorations in the attic that I didn't even bother to get out.
The kitchen table is major plain, with just two jute twine trees sitting on it.
On the kitchen counter, I have one of my little wooden Christmas trees I made several years ago.
The other two wooden Christmas trees are sitting in the living room, just off the kitchen.
Also in the kitchen I hung this new Advent calendar. I bought it at an After-Christmas Sale last year for major cheap. Not sure if you can tell but there's a small snowflake on a string that you move to the star with the current date on it.
Thanks to Pinterest, I was really excited about making a little Hot Chocolate Bar to set out in the kitchen. I'm not really a coffee drinker, but I do love a good cup of hot cocoa when it's cold outside. I borrowed the tray from my mom (it's from World Market) to coral all the items for the bar in.
I placed several jars on the tray - the biggest one is full of cocoa mix and two smaller ones hold marshmallows and candy canes.
Hiding behind those jars is a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps...for grownup hot chocolates.
I made a little sign with directions, even though I'm pretty sure everyone knows how to make hot chocolate. I just wanted to use the cute little ornament holder!
And no Hot Chocolate Bar is complete without festive mugs. I may switch these out for plain mugs after Christmas so I can keep my bar out through January.
In the entry hall, I set up a magnetic board to display all of our Christmas cards. I just bought this recently and love it, but it's already full and we've received more cards! I may have to get another one for next year to have 2 display boards.
This little tree fit in well with my casual, burlap theme.
It was an after-Christmas sale purchase as well and I love it. It has little colorful balls on the ends of the branches.
Besides the big 12-foot tree, I didn't do much else in the living room. I stuck these trees into the painted built-ins and pretty much called it a day.
We have a small hallway between our room and Doodle Bug's room where I finally got around to hanging a picture over the piece of furniture that randomly got placed there when we moved in. I added these three felt trees too - another sale purchase from last year.
And last, but certainly not least, is the little tree in Doodle Noodle's room. I had randomly purchased this hot pink tree last year (apparently I went majorly shopping for decorations after the holidays??) and thought it would fit well in her room with pink and silver ornaments. I'm 100% sure she hasn't even noticed it, but oh well. (She was also unimpressed with the 12-foot tree that I tried to show off to her.)
So that's it. You may notice that I didn't show any stockings hung by the chimney with care...that's because there aren't any. Yep, I'm the mom that didn't get a stocking for her new baby. Oops. We have cute stockings for the bigger kids, but they're so old that I couldn't find one for her to match. I'll have to be on the lookout for some cute new matching ones for them. Next year I'll do better! (She won't even know this year, right?)
Wonder how long it'll take us to dismantle the giant tree in a couple weeks...