It [still looks] a lot like Christmas!

I had a Christmas decor post all ready. Unfortunately, I lost track of time. Fortunately, I was inspired by Aunt Peaches to go ahead and post my decorations anyway, for those of us who want to hold onto Christmas year-round. So here you go!

You've all seen my snowflake ballerinas, but here they are again, for reference. (Along with our cute little tree.)

One of the very first things I put up for Christmas actually came about as the result of working on a different craft. My freshman year of college, a group of friends and I drove down to New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras. The parts of it that I remember were awesomeeeee! (Granted, that's not TOO much, but.)


My main souvenir from that intoxicating (ah heh heh. See what I did there?) weekend was a milk crate (which I found on the street after a parade), entirely filled with beads. FILLED with beads. I've had vague designs for those beads ever since, but never got around to doing much with them...until I started the tedious process of hot-gluing them to a stool to use as a very glitzy nightstand.

I'll do a post on that later, but for now, suffice to say that I realized during this project that I seemed to have a LOT of beads in several colors: namely, red, green, and gold. What ever could I use red, green, and gold beads for, in DECEMBER? Oh, wait.

It's not a LOT, but it's something!

Very super easy. I just looped each string of beads together, then clambered all over various surfaces with a mouthful of little picture nails and my adorable pink hammer. I may never take them down. Bonus: I had EXACTLY enough strands to make it all the way around the living room.

"Our house wine is Jägermeister"

Now, I adore Playmobil. They have absolutely the cutest, most fun toys in existence, and I'd think my friends would agree with me, based on the use that my Playmobil Nativity got this winter.

Why yes, Joseph is putting lambs in the soup kettle over  the fire.

And yes, this goat is being used as a lantern-stand.

And apparently all the animals want to see Baby
Jeebus, and the kitten is about to suck his breath out.

(None of us are particularly religious, sooooo. If you're offended...take some time to realize that these are plastic toys.)

 I also have a bunch of little Christmas tchotchkes I've gotten over the years from Kinder Überraschungseier (or Ü-Eier for short, or just Kinder Eggs), which, in case you don't know, are hollow chocolate eggs with a little toy inside. Sometimes you have to put the toys together yourself; sometimes, as in this case, they come pre-assembled. That's also a Lego Santa sitting on my thermostat.

Next up is a project I worked on with my mom that became Christmas presents for all my girlfriends. We'd seen a picture on Better Homes & Gardens of some flowers underneath upside-down wine glasses, used as a centerpiece, and when we found cool hobnail glasses at the Salvation Army, an idea was born.

For my friends, we created little Christmassy vignettes, using mini ornaments, poinsettias, Christmas buttons in the shapes of gingerbread men and snowmen, and various other fun little things (I'll put up pictures, along with a tutorial, some other time), but I just used some shredded leftover wrapping paper and ribbon, plus added some more Kinder Egg toys to sit on the top of the overturned glasses.

I also decorated our guest bath, because I'm classy like that. More Playmobil, please!

A little angel in a pony-propelled sleigh, a daddy pulling his daughter on a sled, and Santa. Hecks yes. And I thrifted the Santa tin several years ago and have just been waiting for the moment where it'd finally come into its own.

And these are Santa socks, into which I stapled ribbon so I could hang them on the towel bar. Because OMG do you SEE how cute they are?!!?

And my easiest, most wonderful, most transcendent Christmas/anytime decoration ever was a hand-me-down from Spencer's mom. It WAS a tree topper, but since one of my trees has a pre-wired topper and the other has an awesome vintage thrifted topper, I found a different use for it:

HAHHAHAHAHAHA oh my gosh, I seriously can't get over how much I love this guy. It's just silly and fun and wild and wonderful, and it will DEFINITELY be living in that lamp year-round.

So those are all the little accents, besides some more Playmobil (Santa's sleigh, and a light-up tree, and a bunch of presents). Yes, I have two trees, but one of them's just your basic fabulous mini fiber-optic rainbow tree (which sometimes works) and the other is a borrowed little four-foot tree sitting on a stool, which you saw in the very first picture in those post, and they're nothing special. There will be even more Christmas posts from me, though, so keep your eyes peeled if you miss the holiday season already!