It’s time. After months of waiting, after weeks of waiting for Thanksgiving, we can finally blast Christmas music at full volume and come alive with the festivities of midwinter. It’s time to swap out all our pumpkin candles and chai tea for pine wreaths and peppermint everything and candy cane green tea.
This whole week has been a flurry of Christmas decorating, featuring (to no one’s surprise) a lot of greenery and twinkly lights. It took us a little longer than usual, but over the course of last weekend we pulled down all the boxes of decorations and began, slowly but surely, to transform our home into a magical winter wonderland. Amy Grant’s Christmas albums are back on repeat, there’s a tree to be decorated and Dickens houses to be arranged, and the end result is like a magical winter wonderland—without, of course, the snow.
Let’s start in my room. I hung a wreath on the door, which is lovely because I catch a nice whiff of evergreen every time I walk in the door. On the vanity, when you first walk in, there’s a “Balsam Fir” candle from Marshalls, placed in the center of another (smaller) evergreen wreath. I’ve been loving this brand of candles lately—they’re called “Scentsational” and not only do they smell amazing, they also burn well over time. And they’re just so cozy! Honestly, one of the biggest things I’m dreading about going back to college is the fact that I’m not allowed to burn candles in the dorms.
On my bookshelves, I set up my Christmas tree with a woodland theme of pine cones, white pumpkins, and old hymn books. That’s Alexei the Hedgehog and Sookie the Bunny, my dear woodland friends. You may notice, also, that the top half of the tree is not lit. This is no trick of the camera; the lights are indeed burnt out and I’ve been horrible about finding a new strand of lights to fix it. Because the lighting isn’t configured, I haven’t decorated it yet. So it’s half cheerful and half sad.
Some highlights of the rest of the house: the nativity set on the mantle, the living room Christmas tree, the miniature setup of Department 56 Dickens’ houses, and the elegant homemade garland of pine and eucalyptus that hangs over the front door.
Most of these decorations are things we’ve collected over the years at garage sales and thrift stores. My mom has done an amazing job of curating our decorations down to the things we love. For example, we got rid of all our tacky Santa-themed decorations years ago. Now we’ve mostly honed things down to a more natural color scheme: silver, white, green, red. Evergreen, twinkly lights, you get the gist.
There you have it! Hope you’ve been inspired to deck your halls with all the holly and ivy and pine and eucalyptus and all the twinkly lights you can find. December truly is the most wonderful time of the year, and all the decorations and lights are so warm and welcoming at the end of a long day.
Happy bedecking,
<3 Olivia Grace
