Christmas Decorations

With Baby #3 due any day now, I've been rushing to get a million things done.  Usually I like to have things clean and organized before the holidays, before we have houseguests, and before a new baby comes, and this month we're expecting all three at the same time.

One of my top priorities was making sure the house was decorated for Christmas, and so the day after we got back from Thanksgiving in San Jose Dev and I set to work. 

(And thank you to Dev for staying out all night hanging lights and running electrical cords during an unusual cold spell - we've had lows in the 30s here at night, which is pretty cold by L.A. standards.)

Some decorations outside:

And at night:

 

And inside:

 

The trees I made last year.

 

I love the table centerpiece this year, too.

 

 

 

 

Beatrice calls the back room "The North Pole" all year long because it's the room we where we always put the Christmas tree.

 

We splurged on some new stockings this year.  I sewed our original set back around 2001 and they have sentimental value, of course, but they are also small, and lopsided (I've improved my sewing a lot since 2001), and Dev always complained that they didn't have our names on them.  So we ordered new personalized stockings from Pottery Barn, including one for the new baby and one for all the pets to share.

 

 

This year I did all of our wrapping in black, red, and white.  I really like the tweed, chalkboard, and velvet textures.



This year I also shamelessly copied Amy Robb's idea for making a modern Christmas village.  I found these four light-up Christmas village houses at a thrift store (they are from the 1980s, from Mervyn's) and spray-painted them with several coats of primer and then white semi-gloss paint.  Then I just added some little trees and a few light posts from Michael's.

 

BEFORE

 

 

AFTER



 

Now with everything decorated, we can just sit back and wait for Christmas (and the new baby).