Christmas Home Tour

Welcome to our home! 

We decorated at about 50% this year.  I only pulled out a few tubs of decorations and it's been great.  We enjoyed decorating together, added a few new decorations and are really enjoying the holidays together.  This super short Christmas season seemed like the perfect time to scale back a bit.  I'm sure I'll be really thanking myself for this idea after Christmas when it comes time to put it all away.

Here's a tour of the Christmasy spots around our house this year.  I love traditional red and green for Christmas so you'll see a lot of color.  We got 6 inches of snow on Sunday/Monday.  I hope you enjoy a snowy tour of our house.


I added some lights to my favorite berry wreath this year!  I got this wreath from Hobby Lobby maybe 3 years ago.  I just love it on our bright blue door.

We have garland and warm white lights anywhere we could this year.

I love this sweet snow covered church that I found this year.

We picked out a real tree that ended up being smaller than our normal trees.  Olive had her heart set on it so the parents did the compromising.  We discovered a bird nest tucked away inside the tree when we got it home.  I've always heard that's a sign of good luck for the coming year!

We have a mix of photo ornaments, sentimental ones and bows/berries.

I always ask for a new personalized family ornament.  This cup of chocolate has the 5 of us on it!

I love how my Christmas mantle turned out this year!

Fun story: When I ordered these stockings back in 2016 I ordered FIVE of them. 

We only needed four at the time.  I knew I would never be able to order another one since they were from TJ Maxx.  It was my just in case we might ever need a 5th or need to replace one of them.  It makes me SO happy and thankful to see five stockings on our mantle this Christmas.  Olive thinks we need initials on them so I'll add that to my to buy list for next year.

On to the kitchen...
Gingerbread houses + metal houses.  I got out all of our bottle brush trees since they're my favorite and scattered them all over the house.

We hang our Christmas cards up when they arrive.  I love looking at them.  This photo is a better one with all of the colorful lights lit up on the houses.

This sweet bunny picture always hung in our house growing up.  My mom made it and I've always loved it.  I randomly asked my mom for it last year and she gave it to me.  It makes me smile every time I see it!

I've always wanted a Christmas tree in our playroom so we made it happen this year.  I intended to get a flocked tree, but we all fell in love with this silver tree.  It's so sparkly and pretty!  We have a quirky mix of ornaments and it might be my favorite tree!  The kids helped pick out all the accessories and decorate it.

Each kid has as 4ft tree in their bedrooms filled with their own ornaments.  They've also got some fun bottle brush trees.  We love decorating their bedrooms with some Christmas cheer.

We added some vintage big Christmas lights to our tiny new pine tree this year.  It looks so sweet and was just so pretty in the snow this week!

Santa Brunch

We've been going to brunch with Santa since 2015.  It's one of our favorite events at the country club.  We look forward to Santa and his reindeer coming for brunch all month long.

We made reservations with friends this year and it was so much fun!  Both kids rehearsed what they'd ask Santa for - LOL dolls & a Nerf gun.  Neither was scared.  They were both excited about everything (except wearing fancy clothes that weren't as soft as they'd hoped - ha!) and I'm convinced they'll only want to wear Crocs for the rest of their lives.

 The reindeer are always so cool!

Brunch is my favorite.  This is my mom plate... I'd already been through the line with both kids, Kevin was on cutting up food duty and then they were requesting refills of certain foods.  So I got my food + their refill requests.  It was all delicious.

 Cookie decorating time!  Fletcher didn't lick any knives this year so I'm calling it a win.

2 big kids + baby bump :)

Olive was very particular about how her cookies were decorated this year.  It's sweet to see her growing up and paying attention to details.

 Red & green family photo!

 Do you take your kids to see Santa every year?

6 Holiday Hosting Tips

Are you hosting friends and family at your house this holiday season?

I've hosted a random mix of things this month and wanted to share some holiday hosting tips with you today.

1. Make your menu easy and delicious
Take a tip from Ina Garten and do a mix of homemade + store bought foods to make your life easier.  You don't want to be stressing about making all the food instead of entertaining.  I hosted an appetizer lunch this weekend. 

I made my Brown Sugar Bacon Wrapped Smokies, chopped up veggies and made a really quick cheese tray and then picked up mini tacos, Bagel Bites and chips and salsa for lunch.  I also opted to make Christmas Blondies and Christmas Rice Krispie Treats.  I only made a 9x9 pan of them instead of a 9x13 pan to save time. 

The menu was so fun and quick to prep!!  That blondie recipe is from 2013 and it was so good!  I forget to make them in my regular rotation of desserts.  That's got to change!  They tasted just like a yummy cookie, but were much less work to do them in bar form.

These mini tacos were about $7 from Sams.  I'd recommend them with lots of yummy dipping options.  They are pretty mild and are best with salsa, sour cream, guacamole or a cheese dip.  They are really easy to heat up in the oven and eat as a finger food.

2. Stock your bathrooms with extra toilet paper, clean hand towels and do a quick clean

3. Set up stations for your food
Drink station, dessert station and main meal station.  That will help things flow easily through you kitchen.  I used a lot of what I had on hand - mason jar cups, picked out Christmas paper products from my stash and used some favorite Christmas table cloths to make everything look festive.

Drink Station:

Dessert Station:

Main Menu Station:

4. Delegate
I'll be the first one to acknowledge that I am not great at asking for help, but I'm trying to get better. 

I remember feeling frustrated in the past when my husband wouldn't read my mind about chores that needed to be done before hosting.  It felt like I had to do everything.  This time I told him 4 specific things I needed his help with - vacuuming, managing pet hair on the furniture with rolly brushes, watering the Christmas tree and taking out the trash from all the trash cans.  He was happy to help and it really did lighten my work load.  I also gave the kids specific tasks to take care of before our guests arrived.

5. Be aware of any allergies (pet and food) and buy local specialty things to share with your guests.  
For example, When I host certain friends I know that one is allergic to cats.  I always clean, vacuum and put the cats away for her visits.

Kevin and our friends really enjoy local craft beer.  He swung by a local brewery to get some local beer to enjoy during their visit.  Our friend does the same when we visit them.  I always try to have lemonade for my friend or make a favorite food for them.

6. Snap a few pictures
I always love having pictures with friends, pictures of spreads of food and pictures in general.  I try to snap food pictures before guests arrive or at the very beginning.  Then I make a point to take a picture of the kids or the friends before they go.  I'll text them out after the party.  Everyone seems to appreciate a quick snapshot vs taking pictures throughout the whole party.

 Sarah and I have been friends since high school.  It's so fun to get together with our own kids!

And we have matching Christmas baby bumps this year!!  It's so fun to be at the same stage of life as your friends.

What are your holiday hosting tips??

Editing Your Christmas Traditions

Hey friends!  Happy Friday.  Hope you've had a wonderful week.

We're in full swing Christmas mode over here.

We have my mom in town, are planning Olive's class party, going to her Christmas program, having friends over this weekend and are 99% done with our Christmas shopping.  It's crazy how quickly Christmas is coming this year.

I made the decision to edit our Christmas tradition again this year.

I wrote about it about in 2017 (Editing Your Traditions).  I realize that every year I'm editing our traditions a little bit depending on the season of life we are in.  I think it's so important to let your family values, family priorities and your family preferences guide you instead of feeling the need to do EVERYTHING this Christmas season.

I know that my family enjoys holiday events, traditions and activities, but we also very much enjoy quiet days at home.  It's not fun for us to be on the go all the time or go to multiple events on the same day.  This requires some editing and prioritizing to make the holidays fun, enjoyable and memorable for us.

This year our priorities are:
1. Baking cookies to share with neighbors and friends.
2. Mailing out photo Christmas cards
3. Going to church every Sunday in December + Christmas Eve
4. Decorating our home
5. Getting a real Christmas tree & add a tree to our playroom
6. North Pole Breakfast
7. Decorating the outside of our house with lights
8. Olive's Christmas program and three class events this month
9. Santa Brunch & Gingerbread Decorating Party
10. A handful of community Christmas events

These things have been edited out of our plans this year:
1. Getting out every Christmas decoration we have.  Last year I edited our Christmas decoration collection.  This year I am opting to only get out about half of our decorations.  I attribute this to a short Christmas season, me being 22 weeks pregnant or just wanting to enjoy the holidays vs stress about all the decorating and undecorating.  This is an area that always has room to be edited in my book.

2. We had to miss out on some fun activities in the name of resting and relaxing together at home.  We missed birthday parties, fun community events and activities to avoid making our family time stressful.

3. Limit buying new decorations.  I really did not buy many new things this year.  We were stocked from last year so the main focus of our purchases were outdoor Christmas lights.

4. Limit out of town travel on the weekends in December.  We are hosting instead of traveling and are grouping our travel together so that we are home most of the time this month.

5. Limit the Christmas recipes I'm making.  We have favorites and I like to cook/bake.  I'd love to try all the recipes on my Christmas Food Pinterest board.  But that requires a lot of looking, shopping, clean up and work to make those happen.  Instead I'm making favorite recipes and only trying a couple new things.

Are you finding yourself editing your family traditions this year??  How have they changed?


I have a few friends to share with you today!  Justine and Whitney are two of my favorite blog friends and they both wrote Christmas posts that struck a chord with me this week.  Their posts are SO GOOD.  Check them out:

Justine @ Full Hands Full Heart
Giving the Gift of Time

Whitney @ Come Home for Comfort
3 Things to Pray Before Christmas

Holiday Highlights

We have had a fun filled Christmasy week so far!  We went to Kevin's Christmas party, finished decorating our house, visited our local Mouse House, celebrated St Nick's Day (a day late) and got to go to a fun rock star themed birthday party.

I got my days mixed up and forgot to have the kids set out their shoes for St Nick to come on Thursday night.  I talked to Kevin about it and we decided to bump St Nick's Day back a day and celebrate it on Saturday instead.  I sometimes stress about silly things when in reality the actual celebration and fun (not the specific time/date) is most important.

We woke up and headed to our local Mouse House event early on Saturday morning.  It's a wonderful event that raises money for local scholarships for kids.  We saw LOTS of friends and had the best time.  The kids are at such a fun age to get out and do things.  They're such fun big kids.  

We got to meet a real reindeer.  The kids loved petting it and feeling the antlers.

 The mouse ears + mouse faces were adorable!!  We got to see a movie and eat popcorn.

Make reindeer food to leave out for the reindeer on Christmas Eve.  Thanks to a couple of sweet friends for taking our pictures :)

 This was our 3rd or 4th year going to see Mrs Mouse at Mouse House.  The kids LOVE her!

My friend Whitney throws the best parties.  Even Olive knows that Whitney's parties always have a theme and are going to be tons of fun.  We went to her daughter's rock star party on Saturday.  The kids loved the stage.  They played with inflatable instruments, sang karaoke, designed guitar pic necklaces and left with tattoos.  The chocolate fountain and seeing friends was the highlight for me!

My dessert dreams come true.