Our first few years married, our Christmas decorations and tree were a bright, bold hodgepodge. Everything we put up was handed down to us and hardly any of it matched.
About five years ago, we started to accumulate new decor that we picked out ourselves. And, by we, I mean I. Our color scheme went from everything you could imagine -to gold and white. For a kid that grew up with a house decked out in whimsical decor, this was quite a departure. My family actually rebelled and teased, ok actually complained to me, the first two years. But, I love a good theme that is centered around gold and sparkle. I didn’t let anyone, not even my mama deter me. Over the past five years, we have slowly increased our decor collection. It’s nice going at a slow pace and not stressing out over a complete renovation. It’s of course more budget friendly. Yes, it does make it so your house isn’t Martha Stewart ready that first year you start changing over your decorations, but that doesn’t mean your house, your decor, and your style isn’t yours on your time frame.
This year our new addition is more burlap and some new wooden accents. I love that burlap is a fabric that makes everything approachable. I don’t think I could put any other fabric all over my downstairs without it being overwhelming and gawdy. So, I appreciate the down to earth and rustic aspect that burlap has added to our amassed collection of white, gold, and shiny Christmas decor. I bought some some new wooden trees and a few wooden ornaments. This mama is happy happy.
The best thing about this year’s new additions is the kiddos played a huge part in prepping everything with me. And, when I say a huge part, I mean they did all but place the burlap artistically on the tree. While my son sectioned of random lengths of the burlap ribbon and synched it with pip cleaners to create a flowy effect, my daughter tied rope loops on all of our new wood snowflake ornaments. I love how we turned what was intended to be snowflake garland into ornaments. We used the included rope to make ornament holders versus stringing them on it. I am proud that we thought outside the box and easily turned these into new fun ornaments.
Snowflake Ornaments :
• any wooden ornaments ( we used a bag of snowflake garland)
• thine twine / rope
• scissors
Simply cut the rope and string it through the ornaments to create a loop to hang on your Christmas tree.
Burlap Garland :
• 2-3 Strands of 30 feet burlap ribbon
• pack of green pipe cleaners
• scissors
Randomly section out different lengths of the ribbon and cinch with the pipe cleaner. Make sure to leave one side of the pipe cleaner a little longer so you can wrap around a tree branch to hold it in place. This help create a more bubbly and flowy effect versus ribbon literally being wrapped straight around the tree.
Addition:
Once we got all of our new decor up I decided I wanted more texture and my son wanted more craft projects. I got a pack of 25 plastic clear ornaments and handed them off to my son along with scissors, various ropes from around the house, and stripes of burlap. He got crafty and filled all the ornaments with different lengths and types of ribbon. We hug majority of them on our tree. They tied together our shiny ornaments and a burlap garland. We used the rest in our tables cape on our dining room table.
I love, love, love the outcome. I seriously couldn’t be happier.
While the kiddos were doing all the crafty work, I was busy with the heavy work : keeping the baby from destroying the house. He is in such a destructive, rip everything out, climb everything, throw everything phase. I feel very lucky that he has yet to figure out how to scale the bar stools, so the bigs can still do their crafts, work, and eat without little man wrecking everything. While the bigs were busy working I was also adding batteries into our first ever twinkle lights. I found this beautiful rope with twinkle lights entwined and once lit, I got to work placing it around the tree. I, however, didn’t realize how inconvenient and non cost effective this addition would be. We ended up needing four ropes for our fluffy tree not two, and now to turn them on I have to dig through the tree and turn on each rope individually. Luckily, I decided to place certain ornaments near each battery pack so I can easily remember where each is and reach in and flip the switch. It is hardly as simple as plugging in one large strand, but for this year I am going to make it work. It’s too pretty not to.
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