{christmas fun: decorating!}

Hello again!

We had such a great weekend here at the Ellis house; full of baking, cooking, decorating, and a fun visit to Stone Mountain Christmas!

The weekend started early as we picked out our Christmas tree on Thursday night and brought it home. We opted for a real tree again this year and hopefully we will keep up the tradition as it makes the house smell wonderful (as long as I keep it watered which is not quite my forte…haha). Growing up my family always had a fake tree and Jesse’s had a real one. While the fake one is more economical, it’s fun to pick out a real one and it doesn’t take much set-up. Plus, if you pick out a good one, it has no gaps and looks nice and full! I made my family buy a real tree one year, but my mom still put up the fake one as well…old habits die hard I guess.

{Jesse testing out the durability of the tree}

{the winner!}

That night we took out all of our décor, put on the She & Him Christmas album and put everything up. It was fun to fill our home with Christmas spirit and get pumped for the rest of the season. Christmas was always a big deal in my house growing up, especially because of my mother. She was raised in the Dominican Republic which is pretty warm all year round, yet even though it was always too hot to make it feel like the Christmas season, she still filled her family home with decorations she made with her siblings. She even wrapped their tree (or “palito”) with cotton to mimic snow. She carried her joy for the season into our family and now I am bringing it to my own.

I still have a couple more décor projects I have to finish (i.e. stockings and a fun banner) which I will hopefully be able to work on this week. Below are some pictures of what we’ve put up. The little wire tree with Christmas balls on it is the first Christmas décor item Jesse and I were given for our home. The first year Jesse and I lived together, I remember complaining to Mom Ellis that I didn’t feel very spirited because we didn’t have any Christmas décor up nor could we afford any as we were watching every dime and cent. That Christmas, one of my gifts was that little tree and it fit just perfectly in our home. It’s funny how things can hold so much meaning. One day I hope to pass it along to one of my kids for their first home.

{♪♫it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas♫♪}

I did complete a fun project the previous Sunday with my neighbor Nicole. I got to make my first real Christmas wreath! Nicole went to the dumpsters by the Christmas tree lots to grab leftover tree shavings and apparently she was not the only one with the same idea. She said it was like “Black Friday” at the tree dumpster with ladies everywhere grabbing as much as they could as quickly as they could. So…if you are thinking about attempting this project, make sure you camp out the night before!

It was a fun project, although it took quite a bit of time to finish. We went to the craft store to buy a frame as well as additional elements to decorate our wreaths. After that, all we needed was some wire/twine (to tie the tree shavings to the frame) and a trusty glue gun!

{the finished product}

{& a close-up of the little kissing birds, some rosettes I made with ribbon, & an “e” for ellis}

I hope all of your homes are filled with just as much joy!

Love,

Mrs. E