Saturday, December 1, 2012

our christmas favourites: toys and decorations

we've been keeping ourselves busy around here. we had some fantastic visitors for the past 4 days and had a blast eating out and enjoying some good conversation together. 

but it is december first {already!} and i think most of our decorations are up so i thought i'd share with you what we're doing this year in terms of christmas decoration.
we bought all the christmas decorations/tree/ornaments last year while here in africa, so there hasn't been a need to buy any more this year. i've kept things pretty simple and used what i already had to christmasify things here.


we're doing our advent envelopes again {stay tuned for my post on our favourite traditions} so i hung them up this year with red yarn and clothes pins. i also used red yarn to hang some christmas cards that we've received. our stockings are hung and our tree is up. i let the boys decorate however they wanted this year although after repeatedly dropping some of the glass ornaments, i had to direct jude's ornament-hanging to the plastic/non-breakable ones. 
we purchased some ornament sets that we'll likely sell before we leave here {that are lovely, but generic}, but there are some beautiful and unique handmade ornaments that i'll hang onto for our future christmas trees.
i've set up our wood-carved nativity set on top of the bookshelf in the living room and my new soap stone nativity on the buffet in the dining room. 
tomorrow's advent activity is to pick out a nativity set from the christmas market we'll be going to - i have my eye on a sweet banana fiber one but we'll see what's there. 

the boys loved when i pulled out their little people nativity set a couple weeks ago and have played with it pretty much every day since. i've also let them play with the santa hat we have here as well. noah insisted on wearing it for the first few days. 
and they were so excited when i pulled out all the christmas books they have forgotten about. 


so we've kept things simple and even though the house is in a perpetual state of mess, at least it's a christmasey mess. right?

14 comments:

  1. I love your nativity sets! Also I'm enjoying the one you sent me last year too :) Huddled right under a lit IKEA wreath as a star!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I just bought another one today. It's super cute. :)

      Delete
  2. Inspired by your envelopes last year but our life is not structured enough/kids aren't quite old enough for me to want to implement totally this year. I made a paper bunting with several goals for advent...there are no dates attached & we don't have one for every day. Things like string popcorn for our tree, bake Xmas cookies, make mulled wine. Looking forward to it. Found candy canes today! Excited to bake with them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Inspired by your envelopes last year but our life is not structured enough/kids aren't quite old enough for me to want to implement totally this year. I made a paper bunting with several goals for advent...there are no dates attached & we don't have one for every day. Things like string popcorn for our tree, bake Xmas cookies, make mulled wine. Looking forward to it. Found candy canes today! Excited to bake with them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sadly, I neglected to buy a nativity set while visiting with you! Boo! So I'm settling for a 5" stable with the holy family in it! Regardless, we have so much when others have so little... and I am grateful. Yay for Christmas messes! oh joy!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love all of this. All.of.it. right down to jude breaking some ornaments, cause...heck! that still happens to me.
    speaking of jude, umm, his legs are LONG and he's growing up big time.

    i have done zero christmas shopping, have zero ideas as to what to get people, but am committed to doing some advent readings daily. It's the 2nd and i'm already behind. ha!

    love to you and everyone else!


    bono.

    ps: is it wrong that i long for the day when we sit next to each other and watch downton abbey?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)
      It's not wrong, in fact, it's completely RIGHT to want to sit next to each other and watch Downton Abbey. Most definitely right. :)

      Delete
  6. love thse advent envelopes - i am seeing more and more of those - are they easy to make?
    Autumn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are super easy to make. I had some friend bring over a bunch of scrapbooking stuff that she wasn't going to use so I just slapped on some bright numbers and glued on some festive-type paper and ta-da!
      for the activities, I just scoured the interwebs a bit and made up the rest or modified some.

      Delete
    2. awesome - thanks so much!
      Autumn

      Delete
  7. Your nativity scenes look gorgeous and so unique! And love the idea of the Advent envelopes...

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from you!
If you're commenting as "Anonymous" please make sure to sign your name under your comment so I know who you are!
Happy day to you!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...