Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String…

and few of our favorite Christmasy things (and the week 5 giveaway winner!)…

I didn’t buy wrapping paper this year.  I decided to use the leftover paper we had from years past, brown paper leftover from other projects and Baker’s twine, random ribbon and tape including the Japanese fabric tape I picked up at the Japanese ribbon tape.

We also put up our tree which was a big change from last year. 

Last year’s tree:

This year’s tree:

 

We also busted out our famous nativity scene and the knitted stockings from last year

The She and Him poster that’s always on the mantel sort of fits the scene, don’t you think?  I didn’t notice the connection until after I had put the figures up.

We’re hoping to add to our Christmas ornaments after Christmas (yay after Christmas sales!) but we do have a few new ornaments up this year.  We plan to talk about ornaments more later but here are some new favorites:

The one on the left is St. Basil’s in Red Square in Moscow, Russia.  As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it.  The one on the right was actually the ring pillow/bowl we used at our wedding.  We wanted to hang it up last year but it was packed away in the moving boxes.

Izzy also has her own ornament on the tree.  Speaking of Izzy, we were worried that she’d go after the ornaments and gifts but really has no interest in them.  She does, however, LOVE the tree and will munch on it if we’re not paying attention to her.

Besides working on making the house more festive, I’ve been working on getting someone else more festive…

We went to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party last week where Micah sported this number I scored at Goodwill.  Pretty awesome right?

We’ve got more Christmas decor to share and some crafted Christmas ornaments we gifted.  Can you believe there are only 10 more days until Christmas?

UPDATE**

p.s. the winner of the ElevenTwelveHandmade necklace is AmSim!  AmSim, please contact us so we can get the necklace out to you!