Deck the Halls
Christmas time is in full swing here at our apartment and we've loved adding Christmas cheer throughout our space. Separation anxiety will probably set in when (gasp) it has to all come down. How long IS too long for leaving up Christmas decor?? If your past couple months have been anything like ours, decorating your home for Christmas might slip by before you can blink, so we wanted to share some of our quick and simple (and inexpensive!) Christmas decorations from our apartment.
The very first signs of Christmas to pop up throughout our apartment were these little sprigs of evergreen paired with twigs of red berries. We picked these up at our local grocery store and they can be found in just about every corner of our cozy home.
Our bar cart is definitely one of the pieces of Christmas cheer (yes, yes, pun intended) we were most excited about as the gold frame already had an inherently festive vibe. Amazingly, we bought only one cluster of evergreen and one of winterberry and were able to use them throughout our whole apartment!
Another fun and tasty decoration is to find wine bottles with festive labels. We found this bottle of Cherry Blossom pinot noir from Trader Joe's for just $3.99.
Of course, Christmas decorations are not complete without a tree! We picked our little 6 footer up at Adam & Sons Gardens for $29.99! To fill his branches, we went very high end. Most of the decor on our tree was purchased at.... Family Dollar! Gold bulbs and gold reindeer, candy canes, and lights were all purchases from this dollar store establishment :) Our wood ornaments and burlap wire ribbon came from Joanne fabrics last year on a mega sale! All in all our Christmas decor including the tree itself was under $75! It was great to put up a tree that was so easy and affordable, but the happiest part about decorating our tree was the fact that this was our very first Van Dyke Christmas tree together.
We both remember loving the day that Mom would pull out the huge box of ornaments and we'd pick through what would make it on the tree that year. Jennifer's favorite ornament growing up was an "Old Country" (her mom's family is Czech) ornament that was beaded with sequins (see some examples here). And of course, they always listened to the Amy Grant Christmas albums. My favorite was an electric Superman phone booth which switched back and forth between Clark Kent and Superman himself. We are so excited to build our own collection of ornaments as the years go by together!
Did you have any favorite ornaments or holiday traditions? We would love to hear about them in the comments below!
