Gettin' Our Christmas On

Yes. Our house is already undecorated. But here it is in its Christmassy glory! Hold on to your hats. It's... different than last year. ;)

Numero uno - our tree! Notice anything different?

Remember last year's tree? It was huge-normous. And beautiful. And I miss it already. But we had to make a tough call and admit that we just didn't have room for it. It wasn't worth ditching our dining table for a month while it was up. Sigh. It was so beautiful. But we bit the bullet, and sold it in November which left a nice little chunk of change in our pockets, and a HUGE empty space in our basement. That thing was a beast to store.

Instead we opted for this much smaller tree that lived upstairs last year. (we already owned it! win!) It's not the same, but it was good. And Baby B loved it with all his little heart.

We put the tree by the kitchen doorway, which bumped our little dresser to an open space over by the front door. Um, hello little dresser, were you made special for this spot? We slid it over and I was like "why did we ever have this anywhere else?!" It makes so much sense here. We drop our keys in the bowl, mail in the basket, and tuck lots of hats and gloves into the drawers. Perfect. It's staying.

The other big change to our decorating was that we cut WAY back on how much we put up. We didn't want to use up all our space, and didn't want an outrageous electric bill. So moderation was the goal. Again it was different, but it worked out just fine! Apart from the tree, we did a few small things on the dresser, a nativity on the entertainment center, and a string of lights in the kitchen, master bedroom, and Baby B's room. Super simple. And let me tell  you, when it came time to un-decorate? We were done in 45 minutes flat. Yay! Because we can all agree - undecorating is the WORST.

One of my favorite new decorations was this free Christmas printable (they have a bunch of them for different seasons and holidays. I'm planning to leave the frame out and switch the printable with the seasons!). The nativity was from Target on clearance a few years ago.

Oh, and what's this? No, I can't be! A real live trilobite fossil?!? Why yes, yes it is. My sister got it for me for Christmas. Be still my little geologist heart.

What was your favorite decoration this year? Anybody else try to cut back a little?