It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

     It is Christmastime in the McGuire house, and I am so excited to show you around!  In my estimation, there are approximately elevnty thousand ornaments, seventy-five nativities, fifteen hundred lights, and three stockings.  We are loving celebrating in our new home, and I have had the best time making everything festive.

I don’t why it is so hard to get a decent picture of a Christmas tree…
This is our first married year with a real tree, and I am in looove!  We put all of our personal ornaments on this tree so I can see them all the time!

     My tree style is definitely “more is more".”  I start with white lights near the trunk then colored lights on the outer branches (and by I, I mean my husband).  Then we do the “stuff ins” – big things that don’t hang.  I’m actually going to Dollar Tree sometime this week to buy giant bows for stuff ins.  I get two of each color and stick them together back to back to make a ball (thank my mother for that one!).  Stuffed animals, books, and stockings work as stuff ins too.  The gnomes live under the tree every year.  They’re a much sweeter alternative to that creepy elf…

This is the  closest you can get to standing in my living room…unless I know you in real live person, in which case, come on!  The shelves don’t actually angle back like that, but there was no way to take a picture straight on without blocking out some of the fun.  This year I left all of the shelf décor and just added the Christmas to it, but I have dreams of filling those babies to bursting with all Christmas!

Our stockings came from TJ Maxx or Marshalls a few years ago, and Davis’ came from Lands End.  I love it so much…I may have gotten a little misty when it arrived.

Two of my favorite nativities.  The others are nestled in the shelves.

    
Silver tree and my most favorite Santa pillow of all time!

     That’s the living room in all its coziness.  If I didn’t live in the most poorly lit house in America, I would be able to show you how glowy it is.  You’ll have to stop by for that.  Let’s back into the dining room and see some more of my favorite things!

    
There’s not a great place to put a tree in here…but I made it work.  This one has more of a color scheme than the living room trees.  Of course I love all of my ornaments, but this one doesn’t have any personal ones.  It does however have Persimmon the Christmas Pig and Hildegard Hedgehog and the best sparkling pom-pom sticks I’ve ever seen.

    
We actually have three ceramic trees that my Nana made.  I have the behemoth and my  mother and aunt each have one.  You can’t really tell from the photo, but it’s pretty giant.  It uses a normal, household sized bulb and weighs at least 48 pounds.
The picture on the right is a wider shot of the dining room.  The apothecary jars came from Marshalls and Target (less than $15 apiece), and all of the vintage glass ornaments (my love language) came from my mother.  That Santa is part of the same kooky family as Milton (the moose on the left), Persimmon (in the tree), and the squirrel (unnamed as of yet) on the mantel.  I also have a Halloween cat, an Easter bunny, a Turkey, and a small cat ornament…and a standing appointment with a therapist to discuss my problem.  Kidding about that last one, but seriously…I’m obsessed.

They’re all Annalee dolls, and I find them at TJ Maxx and Marshalls all the time.  Also, for some reason, the jars look dangerously crooked in this picture.  They’re not…my camera makes everything look tilted.

Merry Christmas from the kitchen.  I have my Christmas mugs out, a tea towel on the oven door, and a few fun tins sprinkled around. 

     This. Is. My. Favorite. Time. Of. Year.  There is not a single aspect of Christmas that I don’t love.  Things are gearing up, and I couldn’t be more excited.  This weekend we had our choir Christmas performance, and I am exhausted and exhilarated.  We sang a new arrangement of “Little Drummer Boy.”  Y’all.  It was so much.  Every time we sing these songs that are so familiar to me, I hear them with fresh ears and get something new out of them.  I love to decorate and “do Christmas.”  Can you tell?  But the real reason I love Christmas is the reminder that He came for us!  As delicate and fragile as a newborn, but no less God. 
     I could fill our house until it looked like a forest, but that wouldn’t make Christmas any more special.  Christmas is special before the decorating.  We celebrate because we have a God that gave himself up for us.  He loved each us before the first Christmas and still today.  How incredible that our joy isn’t over when the trees are taken down and the lights are wound up.  Our joy is an eternal joy because, hallelujah, Christmas can never be over.  A day or a month or a season isn’t how we define Christmas.  We define Christmas by what our God did for us, does for us, and will do for us when He comes back! 

Merry Christmas!