Christmas Decorations

I have finally finished putting up our Christmas decorations--only two days before we leave to join my side of the family in South Carolina. We are really trying to stick to a budget (we're anticipating a kitchen re-do in the next few years!) so I tried very hard to keep things simple and be in a use-what-you-have frame of mind. I have gotten so many ideas from reading crafty and DIY blogs.

We put our tree in our living room:

and here is the mantle:

Besides the snow village on the sideboard in our dining room, of which I forgot to take a picture, our chandelier looks like this:

I added some lighted garland to the railing on our stairs and Benjamin loves to plug them in every morning. On on our way downstairs, he always asks to "plug twinkle lights in?" I convinced Jason to hang these wreaths on the outside of our downstairs windows. Next year, we'll get them hung on both the downstairs and upstairs windows!

You can't necessarily tell from these photos, but our house feels very Christmasy and cozy--it's a great time of year!