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I love Christmas! It’s my favorite time of year. I guess that it’s probably a lot of people’s favorite holiday! My grandchildren love all the decorations, cookies, gingerbread houses, and especially the presents.

It’s also the only time I actually enjoy decorating. I guess it’s because, at Christmas, the whole house gets decorated. As many of my readers know, we moved this past September. Thus, I had to come up with a whole new set of Christmas decorating ideas for this house.

Since we got a late start decorating this year, I will also share photos of my Christmas decorations from my previous house. Just so you have a few more photos to get ideas from.

One of my favorite things to decorate is the fireplace mantle. This house is smaller than our last house because we downsized, so I have a lot less room to work with. You can read about our recent move here.

The decorated mantle at our previous home is shown above.  I used a beautiful sparkly red fabric that I bought from JoAnn’s Fabrics several years ago.  Cutting the fabric into squares made it easier to get the look I wanted for the mantle. 

For this house, I knew I wanted to go in a different direction.  The house has a little bit different feel to it and this was a great opportunity to start fresh.  Luckily, my granddaughter’s stopped by to play with their Christmas “friends”.  We buy new friends each year to add to the “class”.  They play school a lot with their friends, so they are always lining them up for recess, etc. 

Thus, when they left today, we noticed that the “friends” were neatly arranged in front of the fireplace. So, after I finished with the tubs of decorations, I decided to move the friends to the fireplace for a lovely Christmas decoration. 

Isn’t it the cutest thing?  We don’t usually use our fireplace, but if we decided to, we could simply move the “friends” over by the tree.  Also, the “friends” are easily accessible to my grandchildren to play with when they come over.  A win-win!

The Christmas tree was a bit more challenging.  At our last house, I had an artificial 9 1/2 foot grand fir in the living room and a 7 1/2 foot narrow pine in the family room. 

I will say that storing a 9 1/2 foot artificial Christmas tree was also a bit of a challenge.  You can read more about my artificial Christmas tree storage bags here.

And here is a picture of the Patriotic Red, White, and Blue tree I decorated a few years ago.  I think it turned out lovely!

And one more pic of the big tree, decorated with just red bulbs. Such a beautiful tree that year!

At this house though, the ceilings are only 8 feet high.  Which means we had to give away our beautiful big tree. Luckily, the family room tree fits perfectly in our new house. 

Prior to that, we always had fresh trees, which made the house smell heavenly.  But, it got to be very expensive, because we always bought the tallest tree we could find.  And, it was difficult to get it out the door after Christmas because it was dried out. But, since we will only need a small tree, next year we are planning to get another live tree! 

Anyone who knows me will tell you I am decorating challenged.  That is, with the exception of Christmas.  One of my favorite places to decorate is the dining room.  I love to put all sorts of decorations in the center of the table.  Here are a few pictures of my dining room table decorations.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to make the dining room and kitchen tables festive is to use chair covers and table cloths.  I got mine at Bed Bath and Beyond.  Thank goodness for their 20% off coupons! 

As a side note, did you know that they will honor the coupons after the expiration date?  And, they will take several at a time.  The most I have used is 5 at a time.  So, save the 20% off coupons you get and keep them in the glove box of your car.  You never know when you might need to “emergency” stop/shop there!

One of my absolutely favorite areas to decorate is the stairway.  It’s one of the most time consuming decorating projects but has the most impact.  Every year, we take pictures on the decorated staircase.  It’s always so beautiful, I surprise myself! 

I can’t tell you how many different ways I have decorated the staircase, but here are a few pictures of our last staircase decorated for Christmas.

Our new staircase is being renovated, so we will not be decorating it this year.  We have replaced the wooden spindles with wrought iron and removed the acorns from the newel posts.  That project will be covered in another future post, so check back soon to see what we have done with the staircase.

Another favorite Christmas decorating idea of mine is the Christmas Village.  I was able to buy a lot of the village houses after Christmas one year for less than half price!  So, keep that in mind if you have already done your Christmas decorating but want to plan for next year.

Here are a few pictures of my Christmas village from years past at our old house.

We always have a nativity scene in our home. My daughters gave it to me one year for Christmas, and it is absolutely gorgeous.  It is, after all, the reason for the season.  I enjoy lighting it up with candles and sitting by it.  It brings me a great sense of peace. 

This year, I decided to put it on the decorative nook by my staircase.  It just fit, and I love the intimacy of the nook.

I hope you have enjoyed my Christmas decorating ideas, and that they might help you with decorating your home this year and for many years to come. 

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays to all of you!

Enjoy!