Christmas Decor!

Me, looking oh-so-fabulous at 39 weeks pregnant and decked out in a tree-skirt cape.
Pardon the crazy hair, it was Saturday....

Now I know that most of y'all have been trying to be well behaved and keep yourself from strewing tinsel and pine branches about in preparation for Christmas but *I* thought that I would be holding a baby by now and decorated for Christmas accordingly! :-) So today I have a brief picture tour of the bits and pieces of Christmas decorating I've done...

 Here we have our "fireplace"! Complete with stockings (although I still want to get one for BabyGirl even though I probably won't be able to put a bunch of stuff in it since she'll be so little...). When I packed up our Christmas stuff in AZ I conveniently left the lights and red stuff wrapped up in the garland so this year it was breeze to unfold and plug in! 

Over on the wall by the bookcase (you can kind of see the bookcase in the left corner of the top picture) I have some 3D snowflakes that I made following this tutorial. (Side note: In step six, I overlapped the points and cut off the extra pointy bits and used those straight edges for taping the pieces down. Also, instead of being able to staple the two sections of three together, step ten, I had to use a glue gun because I couldn't find a stapler skinny enough to hold them together as tightly as I wanted them. And I used card-stock so I didn't need to staple all the arms together, step 11, but I can see how that would be helpful if you were using a thinner paper.)

Over the front door we have an interesting mix of stuff! A red velvet bow tied to some sprigs of holly and some golf-ball jingle-bells. They're cute and they're not on the actual door so they don't jingle every time someone comes in. (A plus, I think. Jingle bells are are cute for about the first 10 rings. :-P)

(Note our hospital bags all packed and ready in the corner there next to Noel's shoes...)

Then, inspired by pinterest I cut out words from... well... if you can't figure that out then I'm not telling. :-P Anyway. It was super easy! (The second time. The first time I tried to be clever and print out letters on construction paper, which isn't made in handy 8.5x11 sheets by the way so I hand-cut them down to size, but after half an hour and getting only 1 1/2 inch tall letters I gave up on straight lines and cut them out free-style!) And the garland over the hutch is another "I was all clever last year and left it all put together" moment.

And here is our tiny living room window all prettied up with snowflake ornaments! (We have two other giant windows but I didn't have enough ornaments or patience to do this with them. :-P )This is one of my favorite bits I think. I just used a piece of red rick-rack tacked up to the corners of the window and grey thread (or whatever string was already attached to the snowflakes) to tie everything onto it.

 We are planning on getting a tree this year so I will put up a picture of that as soon we have it all lit and decorated. :-)

 Are y'all breaking out the Christmas decor yet? Do you have a set date you usually break everything out on? And what about Christmas trees, do you go get a new one every year or do you like the easiness of artificial?

 Merry Christmas to You!
~Noble