Our Second Christmas in the House

This Christmas was a little different than last year. I decorated more, for one thing. We had more finished (or semi-finished) rooms. It was also nice to be able to do a lot of baking in the kitchen. Having a kitchen table again definitely helped! I think I made over 25 dozen cookies (some of which I brought around to our neighbors).

And this isn't even all of them! I think I made about twice as many as shown in this picture!

We (and by we I mean me) decided to change things up this year and put the tree in front of the front windows. I love being able to see the tree from the street (which you couldn't really do.. oh well.. you could see it a little!). I've also been wanting to try out a different furniture layout in the room. We moved the loveseat to in front of the fireplace. I like it. R doesn't. I think it makes the room feel larger. The only downside (according to me) is that the coffee table is a little awkward because of the tree.. it can't be centered on the couch, so it's just kinda hanging out in the middle of the room.

I especially loved being able to decorate in the kitchen. Last year at an after-Christmas sale we got these two artificial trees for $2 each. The garland was about $1.

I think this was one of my favorite things in the house this Christmas. I could never seem to get a really good picture of it though.. It looked awesome when all of the rest of the lights in the room were turned off though!

This year at an after-Christmas sale we bough some night pewter and white candles to put in the windows (for $1 each!). We're considering keeping them up all year long. There's another center chimney house across town that does this and I've loved it ever since I was little.

Our House's "First" Christmas Tree

Ok ok... It's not the house's "First" tree... the house has most likely had more than a couple Christmas trees... but it's the house's first tree with us!


We have what we think is a large Living Room, but unfortunately, it's all filled up with furniture, windows and doors. So where would one put a Christmas tree? We had plenty of room for it in the Kitchen or Dining Room, but we wanted it to be somewhere where we'd get to really enjoy it. So that means we had to be able to see it from the Living Room. It was either move furniture around, or put it in front of the already blocked off fireplace. Fireplace it is.

Us with the tree, freshly cut

We have a very heavy duty tree stand (I've had way too many ornaments broken by falling trees in the past... this isn't something we do lightly!), so we weren't too concerned about the tree falling. It was gonna hold up the tree. Well, that in addition to the huge piece of plywood and half a bag of shims. The back of the hearth is raised up from the floor (which is at a huge angle at this part of the room) a couple inches. It looks hilarious... luckily my mom had our tree skirt pieced enough for us to use. The plywood was really tacky looking (you can see it in this picture a little bit)!