Around the House

Over the past few months I've come to the realization that though I am a woman of many talents, home photography is not one of them. Still, I wanted to take some photographs to document our first Christmas in our new house because I think we'll like to look back at them as our house changes over the years.

And there has been a LOT of changes to our house over the past few weeks. The outside is looking at bit bedraggled at the moment because of the torrential rain we've been having for the past week or so (also the reason for no lights this year but you can see our festive wreaths we hung on the windows in the top photo. I'll post a pic on FB once we've dried out a little).  But the inside is just as cute as can be -- I can hardly believe it's the same house we moved into back in September.

Our living room, all kitted out. Anouk calls this table by the door "Snowman Mountain." The tiny one is one she made last Christmas at the Chrysler Museum's family day and I plan to keep it forever.



Our tree from Bright's Christmas Tree Farm is still going strong. The whole house smells delicious from it. And we have no fewer than six mermaid ornaments this year, thanks to Anne's love of them.



The adorable banner over the fireplace was a gift from Playful Paperwork and really makes the room, I think. Not only do we all love how festive it is but the cardstock is high-quality enough to withstand (a lot of) touching by a curious two-year-old and last through many Christmases yet to come. I think my favorite part is the textured paper of Rudolph's antlers and Santa's beard. The detail is lovely.


The ceramic Christmas tree on our bar downstairs was made by my great-grandmother. It's actually part of a set but the other needs badly to be rewired.



Speaking of trees, Anouk has her own little Charlie Brown tree (also from Bright's) in her bedroom. The wood block letters are from my own childhood -- they lived on the fireplace and my dad used to sneak downstairs at night and rearrange them to say "LEON" which was always hilarious to us kids.


This photo is mostly to show you that we now have a kitchen floor! James and my uncle and dad laid the tile over Thanksgiving weekend. We're still doing some finishing work on it but already it's a huge upgrade from what we had before, don't you agree?


 How have you decorated your home for the holidays? Do you go all out (reindeer on the roof) or keep it simple? (I think we fall somewhere in between, a nice balance, but I'd probably be a light-up reindeer person if James didn't hold me back).