Christmas Home Tour 2016

I’m excited to participate in Sarah and Victoria‘s Christmas home tour link-up today! Sarah is not only a blogger that I enjoy following, but she’s also a real-life friend from our education classes in college. 🙂

I didn’t decorate our home last year for Christmas since we spent the month of December at my parent’s house in Alabama during Jamie’s deployment, so I was extra excited last weekend to pull out our two big storage containers of lights, decor, and more.

I usually only pick up a couple of new Christmas items each year for a few reasons. #1 – I don’t really want to have more than three bins (max!) of Christmas decor. #2 – I like leaving space for our decor to evolve steadily and naturally as we find or make items that are special or picked up for a specific reason.

So here’s a look around our home this month. 🙂

My MIL passed down these ceramic light-up homes a few years ago. Our piano/entry way is the perfect spot for them!

Visiting Santa was akin to torture for Hadley the last couple of years, but the pictures are too hysterical not to display during Christmastime. I also have a picture of my sister and me on Christmas morning 2010 – our very first beautiful white Christmas. (Since I’ve been blogging to some extent since the stone ages, I actually have a post recapping that Christmas. It was just three weeks before our wedding and was one of my favorite Christmases ever.)

We love our !

This is our first year to have a real tree, and I have a feeling it’s actually the first of many because we’re enjoying it. All of our ornaments were gifts or have some kind of significance.

“Sadie” made this footprint ornament during her time in childcare at MOPS yesterday, and I was excited to hang it on the tree right by her ultrasound ornament from last year. Last year she was the tiniest baby in my belly, and this year she’s flopping all over my living room trying her hardest to crawl. Time flies.

This snow globe-type ornament always reminds me of the time Hadley hid my cell phone in the Christmas tree two years ago and sent me on the most maddening seven-hour search of my life. Anyone remember that story?!

Every year after Christmas I complete the “fill in the blank” questions in this book regarding our holiday season – what we ate, what parties we attend, if we added any new family members, if we started any new traditions, what our hopes are for the upcoming year, etc. There are roughly five pages worth of questions per year, and we’ve been answering them since 2011. Jamie and I really enjoy pulling out this book each year and reminiscing while skimming through it. We keep it out on display all December long. is very similar and sold on Amazon for $20.

Teddy’s stocking holder now holds Sadie’s, so I need to swing by Hobby Lobby to grab one more reindeer. Teddy is in our retirement plan, of course. 🙂

I love displaying Christmas cards and seeing so many of my favorite people all on one wall.

It’s fun starting to see them trickle into our mailbox.

A glimpse at our front porch laced with faux garland and a wreath –

Finally, we put these festive PBK fleece sheets on Hadley’s bed this year, and she really loves them! Not only are they super warm and comfortable (Jamie and I would love them for our bed!), but she loves the Santa print (which I guess is upside down on her bed). They were on sale a week before Christmas last year, so I snagged them as a special treat for her. She’s very into detail and notices all of the little things, so she was just as excited about these sheets as I hoped she’d be.

PS: Click here to see our full non-holiday home tour. 🙂