Welcome To Our (Interfaithfully) Decorated Home

I am linking up with Kate for Fun Fridays and with Kelly for Show Us Your Life this coming Friday (for those of you visiting before Friday I'll link to Kelly's post then). If you are a new visitor from either of those places, welcome here! And welcome to everyone else as well, of course :)

So my husband is Jewish, I am Christian and we get to celebrate everything. So of course, we have to get to decorate for everything too! But I am Canadian so we are a little more laid back on decorating than most of the tours of homes I have seen from you bloggers, especially in The South. Someday I will come visit and imbibe some of your decorating awesomeness. (Of course I've been able to imbibe my mom's decorating awesomeness for years and it hasn't worked yet so I'll probably have to find another excuse to come visit!)

And I should also mention that I've NEVER decorated for the holidays before. We've always gone to my parents' house and so we've never had to. This year my parents are coming here and we've had a couple of Chanukah parties, so this is my first ever decorating attempt. Dave admits that he's just along for the ride!

First we'll start with the outdoor decorations. I am so proud of myself because I made all the planter arrangement with leftover greens from one of our church programs, sticks Sam found in the yard and six ornaments and some ribbon. As I was taking the pictures this morning it was snowing so that's what the white flecks in the pictures are. And I actually updated the picture on the left three hours after the picture on the right to show how the planter looks with snow on it. I love it! (And please ignore the recycling bins and bag of salt on the porch. They are permanent fixtures and not decorations.)

On our front door is this wreath I made. Dave and I had just decided not to have a wreath this year because I couldn't talk myself into spending the money on them and then I needed to make a quick trip to Michaels. And they had this plain green wreath on for $4.99 so I bought it. Dave was laughing at me as I got to the car because he said, "I thought we just decided to NOT have a wreath!" which was true. But then I explained the good deal and added some silver ribbon and some little ornaments and I'm pretty happy with the result. I just wish I could have gotten (or made) a wreath with real greens. Next year...

We are going with friends to get our Christmas Tree this coming Saturday (I will do a blog post about it next week) so until then I've decided to fancy up some house plants, like this one in our stairwell window. And we'll probably hang our stockings from the stair rail once Chanukah is over. I haven't quite figured out where to put them yet...

Yesterday, the holiday cards lying on my desk were getting to me so I decided to hang some red ribbon in the hallway to hang them on. The only problem with this is that some of them are from Sam's school friends and Rachel keeps trying to steal them which has caused a lot of fights. Oh well... I'm looking forward to seeing how other people display their cards because maybe I'll find a better way to do it.

On, and outside, the kitchen window we have the tissue paper menorah "Rachel" (aka Daddy) made at Tot Shabbat (kind of like Sunday School at the synagogue) and a hanging basket I made. Seeing this hanging basket has made me so happy as I wash dishes!

In the dining room we have the olive wood nativity set I bought when I lived/worked in Israel-Palestine in 1999-2000. I actually bought it for my parents and never got one for me. And I hadn't regretted it one bit until this year. Then about two weeks ago my parents called and said, "We think you should have that nativity set at your house now" and it was really hard for me to say no. And they even mailed it to me so we could enjoy it already, instead of waiting for them to bring it on Christmas Eve. It will move to the piano once Chanukah is over but until then it stays on this shelf, unless Sam is playing with it. I don't want the pieces to get lost so it has to stay up high so Rachel can't reach it!
Also in the dining room are our Advent wreaths. We aren't doing calendars this year (eventually I want to make one) but we do have the wreaths we light every night. We made the paper one with Sam and Rachel's hands and you can find my tutorial here. Every night when we light the candles Sam wants to "re-light" his candles too! And we sing the song they've been using in Sunday School to light the candles there. It's a really pretty song and I love singing it every night.

Heading into the living room we have our "Happy Hanukkah" sign up since we're currently in the midst of celebrating that.

And then we have the top of our piano. Currently the menorah (with four candles waiting for tonight (Tuesday)), some Chanukah books and another decorated plant are on the piano. When Chanukah is over (the eighth, and last, night is Saturday) the nativity set will sit where the menorah is.

And here are Dave, Rachel and Sam with our two lit menorahs on Monday night, including one Sam made with his grandma out of potatoes!

Thanks for stopping by to visit. I hope you enjoyed your stay. Happy Chanukah! Merry Christmas! And now I'm off to visit some of you.