Tis the season for everything to be sparkly!

My last post [which was over a month ago, sorry about that...] showed the finished nursery for my soon-to-be baby girl. Well, two days after that post, she arrived! Isn't she cute?!

So life has been hectic in a completely new and unfamiliar way, to say the least.  But I still have to put up Christmas decor! Maybe not to the extent that I did last year [or every previous year since hubs and I have had our own place], and maybe with a lot of help from my mom, but it's up!  And sparkly and gold.
This year I just decorated the living room.  No extra wreaths and glass ornaments around the fireplace off the kitchen, no kitschy banner in the dining room [though I do love that thing...maybe I'll go dig it out], and no wreaths on the front door.  Just the room that matters most, the one that I spend most of my time in these days.  Because that's all that matters - for a warm Christmas-y feeling, I just want the glow of the lights on the tree at night, when I'm nodding off on the couch at 8pm.

This year I added a faux pine garland around the fireplace [which I bought for about $12 total from Joann's last January.  And when I pulled it out of the decorations box, it took me about half an hour to remember why I bought it and where it was supposed to go.  I should really write these kinds of things down.] AND - the teeny tiny little stocking!  It was only $5 at Target, so I had to get it to match our others :)  It's just so. damn. cute!

Definitely going to be the last year I put these blown glass thingies on the hearth, since next Christmas we'll have a toddler.  An idea is brewing on how to make it sparkly and festive AND toddler-friendly though!  [excuse me while I go write that down so I don't forget...]  Stay tuned next December!

I didn't put near as much stuff on the hearth this year [a combination of not a ton of time to style it, and the fact that I was just plain tired.]  All I really did was add a few silver glass things and a coupla reindeer to the stuff that was already there.  Still festive, but won't take as much time to put away ;)

And the tree!  Still smitten with my gold tree, btw.  And she got a new topper this year!  It's hard to see because the extra 5 minutes I stole to take these photos happened to be during the day, but it's made of capiz shell and it's lovely [and only $29 from Lowe's]
Another addition this year is Bea's first ornament, a 50s-looking ceramic reindeer [which, eventually, I'll paint her name and '2015' on it.  Some day.]

And keeping with the woodland theme I established last year, a new little squirrel, fox and hedgehog [Target pretty much kills it every year, right?]

TIME TO GET REAL.  Bloggers often portray a super-perfect existence that's far from reality [and even though I'm far from perfect, I still would clean up and move clutter, arrange books and plants, and hide cords before photographing the Haus for posts].  However, I appreciate when things are true, and when bloggers get real, and you can see that everyone has to *live* in their house, not just photograph it.  So while this shot here looks pretty good [except for the remotes, notebook & pen, and iphone on the coffee table].....

Pan out a bit, and this is how it really looks: 

[hello, baby gear.  I never thought I'd buy you, much less let you hang out in my living room every day for all to see]

And this shot here:

Was zoomed in just enough to hide this view:

[Hello, little one!  Hope you're enjoying your snooze!]

So!  If you're still reading, thank you for hanging in there during my sporadic posts and long breaks!  I hope you enjoyed this little update!

EVERYTHING MUST BE GOLD.

And silver. And bronze and copper. I guess everything must be just metallic :) 

This is the very first Christmas in the Haus!  I L O V E decorating for Christmas, and I love that I have a house that's suited for a big statement tree, and I have two hearths to decorate!
We splurged on a new tree [and of course it had to be gold - I still swoon when I turn it on every evening, so it was definitely a good investment], and when I was contemplating how to decorate for the season [back in August, when one normally starts thinking of Christmas..... or is that just me?] I wanted to incorporate all of the stuff I'd accumulated over the years so I don't have to buy everything new.  If I had my druthers I'm sure I could spend about $3k on just Christmas decorations :)

Pretty much everything I had was sparkly and silver - check out last year's decs at our last house here!

So I decided to add in a few more metals [bronze and gold] and include the multitude of white bird ornaments I had, and make a MidCentury Metallic Woodsy Wonderland!!! And it's so pretty!!!!!  WHY AREN'T YOU AS EXCITED AS I AM?!  

Little snippets were shared on instagram and caused a bit of a titter of people waiting for the whole shebang, and I'm happy to share it today!

Soooooo - here it is!!

In order to try to keep from spending $3k on decorations, I'm pretty cheap about stuff.  Case in point, I didn't want a big star, or a big bow, or any of the other toppers I was seeing, so I made one.  I just did a quick pinterest search for string balloon light, bought string, glue and a bouncy ball from the toy section, and made one!  Then I sprayed it gold, of course [because EVERYTHING MUST BE GOLD.] I think I spent $3.  And made a big mess.

I used all of my silver glass ball ornaments on the tree [because it's much larger than what I had before!  It ate up a lot of ornaments!] and magically found new ornaments at Hobby Lobby that fit the bill perfectly!  A few blown glass owl ornaments [left], a few mercury glass ones that have a woodgrain texture [middle] and some bronze pinecones [you can see those best in the middle].  The owl on the right was one that I already had, along with several other birds that you can't see, but are still there.  So sparkly and woodsy :)

[I found it quite funny that I put on the fireplace channel on the tv, which is about 2 feet above the actual fireplace.  It's just easier than having an *actual* fire.  Plus, it might melt my amazing, perfect, beautiful stockings!]

More of my old silver stuff!  The stockings are new, and a gift from my sister [because my Target was always out, but hers had them!  Which is good, because as soon as I figured out I couldn't have them I became slightly OBSESSED with them and knew that nothing else would ever work.]  The twigs in the vase were cut from our Bradford Pear tree in our Farmington front yard, and I've used them in my decs since about 2008 I think.  They've been white, champagne, and now this year they're - obviously - GOLD.  And to add some freshness to the mix I took some shears to one of our pine trees in the backyard and just laid it down.  Not only am I cheap, I'm also a teensy bit lazy - this time of year is insanely crazy with work, and I like when I can just take a Sunday afternoon and throw my stuff down and call it a day.  And it usually works!

I kept the dining room minimal, and also very cheap - tossed up some tinsel from Wal-Mart [a whole 98¢] and the 'falalala' sign is from Target's Oh Joy! collection for $4 [every time I go to Target I have to check that aisle - I'm a little obsessed with all of the pretty pretty colors!]  I did splurge a bit on the teensy LED lights, but only because they're amazing.  And they were only $14 on amazon, so I really couldn't afford not to.

[**don't mind the naked steps - those had to be custom ordered separate from the flooring, and they're actually being installed right as I type this!  Rocky's under my feet, all nervous from the nail gun they're using.  So a full 'we got a new floor' post will be soon!]

During a little Christmas party we recently had, the buffet became the bar, and it was the most sparkly beautiful bar everrrr.

On to fireplace number 2!

Again, kept it really simple.  My philosophy is to just add a little sparkle where there is none, and call it a day.  I didn't do a bunch of switching out of stuff - with the exception of my big teak starburst clock, everything got to stay put.  So I added - what else - tinsel and glass ball ornaments!  And a string of lights. Easy. [especially since I had laid out the lights with the intention of hanging them above the bookshelves, but decided they looked just fine on the hearth, and it took about 20x less time to just leave them there.]

Super easy tip - just fill bowls with ornaments.  It's sparkly, and hella easy. Just put big ornaments in the bottom so it fills up faster, and the smaller ones will fill around them anyway, so it looks like you have a ton in there, but it's all just a lie.

Then in the fire box I just added some ornaments around the special Ikea faux plants I have sitting in there, and that's it!

And of course the pine that I cut from the backyard, just laid out to look kinda like I had actually spent money on garland.  Thought about it, but decided 'meh.  I can just go out in my yard in my pajama pants and cut some'.  I also cut a larger branch to put in a big glass vase [with ornaments of course!  but these are plastic.  In case the branch got knocked I didn't want to have a bunch of glass to clean up.  At least not more than the usual that I have to clean up due to clumsiness.  Current count is 4 ornaments down :/]

So I have my own little Charlie Brown Christmas tree!  It's cute :)

The wreath [which my awesome sister made me a few years ago] looked a little lost, so I added the garland up top [which I already had in my stuff, so it was free!] to fill in the space and add more sparkle.  It's just up there with scotch tape.

The outside even got a touch of Christmas too!  I added two boxwood wreaths for a classy touch of green.  I want to do a lot more, but a) can't decide what to put up and how to put it up without ruining the new paint job and b) trying to rein in the extra spending since this house currently eats cash like it's chocolate.

But I love it!  It makes me look a lot classier than I am IRL. :)

Just for fun, here's a shot at night, right after I put up the tree [before the other stuff went up]:

And here's our annual Christmas card! 

So serious :)

RECAP.  Decorating for Christmas can be easy - just use the really cheap sparkly stuff and toss it around any surface that will take it!  Next year will probably look the same, but I have plans for stepping it up to the next level.  As in, I might actually buy garland and put that alllll around the fireplace, and get stuff for the outside, and just MOAR SPARKLE.  After seeing last year's decs I really miss having bowls and bowls and bowls full of ornaments, so after Christmas I'll hit up walmart and get a ton more on clearance, so I can put them on ALL THE THINGS.  

So stay tuned next year to see!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!