Christmas Decor

Hello there!  I'm baaaack!  I've been busy working on some Christmas gifts & Christmas projects, so I'll have some more posts for you soon.

For lots of reasons, I decided to only do a little bit of Christmas decorating this year.  Here in Southern California, the weather doesn't reflect the season, so it's nice to have a reminder that it's holiday time, even if it's just a little bit of decor.  And as a side note about weather - it's finally starting to look like winter here.  We have been getting a day or two of rain with weeks in-between of weather in the mid-70s to low 90s!  Crazy, right?  I noticed some flowers are beginning to bloom in my front planters - I think they think it's Spring and not Fall!

Anyways, I'd thought that I'd share the bit of Christmas decor I put up this year.  I painted the brick fireplace this year, and oh.my.goodness.  It's one of the best projects I've done all year.  The stockings and holiday decor look great with the white-painted brick!  Makes it all stand out so much better.

A closer look on the mantel...I have a bit of a collection of mini trees goin' on.  The paper loop trees I made about 5 years ago - time consuming, but very simple.  The jute wrapped tree and seashell tree I made last year.

The Santa hat tree that I also made last year didn't make it to the mantel this year.  Not enough room this time, so it's residing in the kitchen next to the nutcracker.

Back to the mantel...this apothecary jar with its contents is on the mantel year-round and since I didn't want to move it, I simply added small pinecones behind the starfish and BAM!  Instant holiday decor.

And here's a closer look at the stockings.  They're both the same as before, but they look so much better  now that the brick is painted white.  Seriously, soooo much better.  I was going to make my stepdad's dog a stocking (she is sort of like my dog too, but lives with him), but didn't have time.  I will get to it, though.  She's a white miniature poodle and a white, furry stocking with pink paw pads is going to be ridiculously cute!

I added Target dollar spot ball ornaments to the trifle bowl on the dining room table this year.  I got the ornaments last year and love the colors.  But, I hate the glitter that is on some of them.  I showed you in this post how I hate glitter (I think I'm one of the very few that hates glitter.  I just hate that it gets all over the place and all over me) and how I fixed that problem.

Here are two new ornaments for the Christmas tree this year.  A couple of years ago, I came up with the great idea of how to turn Disney antenna toppers into ornaments.  Some of the antenna toppers are just so cute, but #1 - I don't want to put them on my car and #2 - you can only put one antenna topper on your car at a time.  This year's new one was in honor of the new Cars Land at Disney's California Adventure.  I love how McQueen is wearing a Mickey ears hat!

(If you want to see other examples of my Disney antenna topper ornaments, click here).

My other new ornament is from my trip to Italy.  We saw tons of Pinocchio stuff since he is an Italian character (as the old Italian man said to me in English, but with a heavy Italian accent "Pinocchio - Italian liar boy").  This one wasn't intended to be an ornament, but I figured he was the perfect size, so up he went on my tree.

Side note - this seems to be the new "thing" I do.  As a souvenir from a trip, I buy an ornament or something that I can turn into an ornament.  I love that now, when I am decorating the tree each year, I pull out ornaments from my past trips and remember the good times I've had.

So, that is my little bit of Christmas decor that I have up right now.  It's not much, but enough to keep me in the Christmas spirit.  And it will be nice to not have too much stuff to put away when it's time to take everything down.  :)