It's Beginning To Look A Lot Somewhat Like Christmas

Kelly, of Kelly's Korner, is hosting her Christmas Tour Of Homes and so I wanted to link up our house. If you are visiting from over there, welcome here and thanks for stopping by. I have to say, we are currently halfway across the country celebrating an early Christmas at my parents' house so our decorations at home are a little lacking.

Our outside is looking pretty festive though! I put evergreen branches in our window boxes and hung ornaments on them. My plan was to string lights throughout the evergreens but I couldn't find an outside plug at our house (we just moved in in August) so that plan was not successful.

I convinced my husband, Dave, that our tree out front really had to have some ornaments so I decorated that tree as well. I just love the way it turned out.

Since we put up a live Christmas tree, we decided not to do that before we went out of town for a week, so instead I decorated some of my plants! Unfortunately I forgot to water this plant for almost a month and it's not looking as good as it could be.

I then attempted this pin, which I love, on our piano, since we don't have a mantle. I realized belatedly, like after I'd bought and hung up the ornaments, that because our piano is darker than the white mantle in the pin, that a different colour of ornament would have popped a little more and looked a lot better. Oh well, live and learn. I also decorated the plant on top of the piano :)

Of course, I have our Nativity Set up. Although Sam, my almost five year old, insists on all the figures lying down. I told a friend, "It's like they all completely ignored the angels and fainted in fear!"

I told the story of my Nativity Set last year but I want to share it again because it is so special to me. I bought this olive wood nativity 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 last year. One day, out of the blue, 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. I just love it and am so thankful to have it.

I will make an Advent wreath when we get home on Monday but until then, our wreath currently looks like the picture on the left, excluding the greens which are waiting for me in the garage. Ha! It will look somewhat like last year's, which is shown on the right, when I get it finished.

Since I had some extra ornaments from the piano, and Sam spent some time cutting up some green ribbon for me to "use for Christmas decorating," I created this little display in one of our dining room windows.

That corner below the window is where I'm thinking our Christmas Tree will go this year. And I haven't quite decided where our stockings will hang yet.

As we are at my parents' house right now, I wanted to share a few small pieces of my mom's decorating. She and Sam actually decorated most of the tree together on Tuesday.

Our stockings were hung on the stair rail with care.

And I absolutely loved the way my mom displayed her Nativity Set with tea lights interspersed throughout. I thought it was just beautiful.

Once again, thanks for coming by and checking out this cross-country decorating! I hope you enjoyed your visit and I'm looking forward to checking out, and being inspired by, the other blogs in this link-up. Merry Christmas to you!