A Merry Little Christmas, Part I

I should admit at the outset that I. LOVE. CHRISTMAS.  The stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day is by far my favorite time of year because just about everyone gets on board with the holiday spirit.  Decorations pop up everywhere, whether it's snowflakes, Santas, nativity scenes, or menorahs.  I seriously can't get enough of it.  There are plenty of other holidays in the year (Mr. Great Indoors' favorite is Halloween), but there's no other time of the year as unified as this one. There's a happy vibe around, perfect strangers greeting each other with "Happy Holidays," and holiday music on the radio.  How can you NOT love that?!  (However, I am of the opinion that the Christmas season doesn't officially start until Santa comes through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.... so it irritates me a little bit when I walk into a store BEFORE HALLOWEEN and hear Christmas music.  But to each his own.)

All that said, it shouldn't be surprising that at the first chance I got I slapped up our Christmas decorations.  Mr. GI and I got back from Thanksgiving on Saturday afternoon, and by the time it got dark I was hauling our red and green totes out of the attic.  Accompanied by "It's a Wonderful Life" on the TV (does anybody else miss that movie coming on directly after the T-Day parade?  silly dog show...), I had 98% of the decorations up by the time Mr. Great Indoors came out of hiding by bedtime.  Here's a peek at Christmas in the Great Indoors this year!

The last two years I've had a theme (2009 was silver and gold, and 2010 was candy), but this year I didn't go with any theme in particular.  I used white and gold tasseled cord as garland, plus a collection of silver ornaments as the base, then accented it with ornaments that are special to us.  The tree itself has been around as long as Mr. GI has; we inherited it from his mom during our first Christmas together.  It's a fake tree, but it has real bark on the trunk which makes it difficult to tell that it's fake.  Don't you love how the tree just glows?

Mr. GI had the great idea that since our tree ended up as part of our entertainment center, we should wrap the boxy speaker to look like a present.  Done and done!!

I used a red table cloth for the wrapping paper, some party crepe paper for the ribbon, and actual wrapping paper hot-glued into a bow.  It obviously just had to be pretty on the front and certainly not permanent, so I'm holding it all together with clothespins.

 

An orphaned Christmas earring is now an ornament!

Mr. GI's favorite ornament:  a Christmas light elf

A wedding ornament from my mom.  Sorry, guys, but no real names on the interwebs for us... even in ornament form

As usual, I decked out the living room shelves.  I love that I can change these out every season.

 

I spy a photographer... (P.S.  Thanks to Mr. GI's grandmother for bringing us back the beautiful ceramic bowl from her recent trip to Europe.  I immediately put it to work!  After Christmas we'll actually use it for its intended purpose:  food)

See the Christmas decorations throughout the rest of our house here.

Have you put up any holiday decorations yet?  My mom puts up snowflake decorations that she can keep up until spring.  How about you?

I'm linking up to the Hooked on Houses Holiday House Tour.  Pop over there for a ton of inspiration!  Thanks to Julia for hosting!