Christmas Tour Blog Hop and Link Up

I'm so excited, today is finally the day! I'm linking up with both Courtney and Beth for our holiday home tours! Plus I'm also part of a blog hop with The Blended Blog. So if you're visiting from Lana's blog, welcome!

But I guess the real reason you're here is to see my Christmas Decorations. Plus I have a little surprise for you all. Oh and I have a lot of pictures...you've been warned.

It all starts with the Christmas Tree, we bought this bad boy last year and could not have been more excited to put it up this year.

Let's start at the front door. I made the wreath part for Fall, but couldn't drive to get the rest of the stuff, so it just sat plain as can be on our front door, then my mom took pity on my and gave me the ribbon to add. Next year I'll definitely be sprucing this up a bit. It's a good start though.

Just as you walk in the door, you see our entry way table.  I found the "WISH" sign at Stein Mart, I had never been there until my mom took me the other day, I really liked it, will have to go back again soon.

As you walk in you see this right away.

I have some polka dot ribbon, glittery ornaments, red birds, white birds, white sparky balls on trees, silver bells, makes for a pretty perfect tree. The silver bells are actually from Mr.'s mom, she gave him one a year for 30 years! Each one has the year on it, it's pretty fantastic.

I just love the poinsettias, they are full of glitter and so fun.

These are just plain, but it still ties in with the theme.

 

So you walk a few steps in and then see this. I just love the catwalk up there. Although makes it hard to conceal noise at all, since all of the bedrooms face the noise.

Guess what? You get your first surprise, I decided to video how we decorated the tree this year! So here you go!

 

The view just as you get to the top of the stairs. We have yet to find a tree topper we really love that goes with the tree...so until we find the perfect thing, we'll just wait.

And now your second surprise, I did the same for the banister. Enjoy!

Moving onto the family room. I just knew you wanted to see how I did the mantel. I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how it came out. I pretty much copied what we did last year...and then I called my mom and said something was missing, and sent her a picture. year.

She came over with the red balls, and we found those red Christmas tree at Party City for $1.99, and thought they HAD to go on the mantel.  Really makes the whole mantel look so much better. The wreath was made by Baby Fox last

I got the stocking hangers at Target, where else?

We have this door that goes to our heating unit, and is usually where we hang Baby Fox's school work, but when Christmas rolls around, I just love all of the Christmas Cards we get, that I can't help but display them. I used to have them on the mantel, but it got to be too many and they weren't all getting displayed.

I made those clothes pin reindeer and Christmas trees a couple of years back. I thought I had lost them, but found them in a bin in the garage the other day, was so happy to have found them!

I usually have (fake) fruit in these jars, but I switched them out for some ornaments, I remember when I bought these, I really wanted them, but needed quite a few, so I went to 3 targets in one day to find them, worth it!

Mr. really loves the classic Christmas Tree, he loves colored lights and not the white ones, so we put another Christmas tree upstairs, so we can put all of the ornaments we've collected over the years on that tree.

This year we let the kids put most of the ornaments on the tree and they loved it! As you can see most of them are in the same spot, haha.

some of my favorites, this one my grandparents gave my parents when I was supposed to come from Korea in October, but was delayed until January, so it was my first Christmas, spent without them, and they were heartbroken. But I just love this ornament, they loved me even before I was here.

Speaking of adoption, one of my favorite stories growing up with Horton the Elephant, it's all about adoption and helped us to understand it a little better growing up.

One of the first ornaments Baby Fox made for us.

Oh and we can't forget the last tree in the house. I know another one! We have Baby Fox's birthday tree! Each year he gets his own birthday tree, we decorate it in whatever theme he wants and only put birthday gifts under it. This boy does not know the meaning of getting jipped because his birthday is on Christmas, if anything he gets more spoiled, I never want him to not like that his birthday is on Christmas.

As soon as he saw the action figures, he immediately took them off the tree and took them to his room, so currently there are no action figures, luckily I got one picture before it was partly taken apart.

So there you have it, all of my Christmas decorations! I can't wait to see what Courtney and Beth did with their homes. And don't forget about The Blended Blog Christmas Tour hop, hop on over to see how Sheila decorated her home this year!

Now link up all of your homes below, I'm nosey and want to see it all!

An InLinkz Link-up

Also linking up with Andrea

Decorating With Mom: Christmas Trees

If you are here from The Blended Blog, welcome! Didn't my mom do a fantastic job with her tree this year? Now that she and my dad have downsized, she's down to 2 trees, down from the bazillion trees she used to have. If you are starting here, go check out the tutorial on how to decorate your Christmas tree!

In case you missed it, I'm teaming up with Courtney and Beth for a Holiday Home Tour, so you'll get to see my house all decked out then.

But in the mean time here are some more pictures from my parents home:

What's a holiday without a decorated mantel?

So cute right?

I'm not sure if you knew, but my dad has a love for Notre Dame, so what do you do when you have a huge Notre Dame fane in the house? Devote a whole room to it of course.

From far away it just seems like a tree with ornaments, but let's look at it a little closer...

And one of my mom's favorite ornaments:

and then there is the whole fox theme we have going on, all the time...

Back in the day when my parents had multiple trees, like more then the two I just showed you, they would have a whole tree devoted to just foxes...super cute, it was right when you walked into the entryway.

Those were all the decorations she had done when we did this post. Don't forget to link up with us on December 14th for our Holiday Home Tour!

 

Linking up with That DIY Party, Tweek it Tuesday, Mad Skills Party,  Fabulous Party, Weekend Retreat , Tuesday Talk,  Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party, Let's Be Friends Blog Hop, Wildly Original, Amanda, for Thinking Out Loud, Vanessa and Penny for Thinking out Loud, Lulia, Stephanie and Sarah for The Ladies Collective, Annie and Natalie for Thoughts for Thursday and Joey and Kristin for Stuff and Things

Decorating With Mom: Fall Mantel

If you are coming here from The Blended Blog, welcome! If you're starting here, head over there to get some tips from my Mom on how to decorate your Thanksgiving Table.

As you know I've been a bit gimpy, so this past weekend, my mom took down my Halloween decorations and found all this stuff laying around my house! Seriously, she had NOTHING, and she turned into this in 15 minutes. Amazing I tell ya. Okay I had the pumpkins, but never really did anything with them, I kept buying pumpkins and never used them, she actually made them look good.

She really didn't follow her tips on how to decorate a mantel, but all rules are meant to be broken when you gotta work with what you have right? Baby Fox has been coming home with a bunch of cute artwork from school, so why not include it?

Isn't that noodle art turkey just the cutest? I love noodle art. We'll get to the pumpkin in the center later.

That hand turkey on the far right is his school project from last year...so tiny.

I was on FB the other day and saw this, it's called the Thankful Pumpkin, each night we ask the kids what they are thankful for that day. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the day. Mostly Mini Fox just says what Baby Fox says, but tonight on repeat whenever I asked her what she was thankful for today she just said Mama. Melted this Mama heart a thousand times over. I think this is a great tradition that we will be doing for many years to come. Good thing we didn't carve those pumpkins this year, we can thank my ankle for that.

What are your Fall decorations looking like this year? Comment below with the links!

Linking up with That DIY Party, Tweek it Tuesday, Mad Skills Party,  Fabulous Party, Weekend Retreat , Tuesday Talk,  Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party, 
and Let's Be Friends Blog Hop

New Decorating Series with My Mom - Today's Topic is Mantels

Welcome if you are here from The Blended Blog! If you are starting here, hope on over to Decorating with Mom: Mantels where my mom talks about how to decorate your mantel for Halloween, but really the same concepts can be applied to any holiday, I'll wait....

Now that you're back, didn't she do such a great job?! Growing up she decorated for every single season/Holiday, including St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's day, you name it she had something up for it. I wish I had that bone in my body, to have an eye like that. To see something in the store and say, hey I know where I can put that!

We incorporated objects of things I had and things we found in the store (Pier One and Home Goods). I didn't really picture document the whole process but I'll talk about it. We found the pumpkin garland at Pier One along with the curtain that we draped over the picture. I'm so glad that my mom talked me into getting that, totally worth it!

We started out by putting the garland on the mantel and trying to put everything in front of it, but found that it wasn't working out when we tried to place anything else, since the pumpkins were so big, we ended up covering how cute the garland was. See in that last picture how there is no room for anything else?

So we decided to change it up a bit and put the garland in the front and everything else behind it. We anchored the garland with some ribbon to the skull and cross bones on either side, and then took one of the "leaves" and put it under the skull and bird to keep the garland in place. Then placed everything behind it. In doing so, we now had a height issue, so we stole all of the kids books within reach and started stuffing them under everything.

I had the trick-or-treat bags (they don't have these specific ones, but they do have some cute ones), the spooky candle holder, ghost plate and the little men in front of the skull and cross bones.

 I think it turned out fantastic. We ended up not using a table runner or anything like that because the garland took up so much space we didn't think it needed it. I think I am going to try and find some flickering battery operated tea lights for the candle tree. Mom decided she wanted to use the rest of the stuff that I had, and we figured the dining room table was the best place for it.

Obviously I need a picture in that frame, yep had the frame out all last year...empty. Sad right?

And then the last touch is the Monster Wreath I made a couple of years ago, I just love this little guy, and the kids love him too. Click here for the easy tutorial on how to do this.

My new decorations sure look WAY better than last years decorations. And I used a lot of the same stuff, goes to show you with just the right finishing pieces can go a long way!

Linking up with That DIY Party, Tweek it Tuesday, Mad Skills Party,  Fabulous Party, Weekend Retreat , Tuesday Talk and Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party, 
and Let's Be Friends Blog Hop

Christmas Decorations

I'm joining Andrea in her last Come On In Series for Christmas Decorations, while not all of mine are up yet, here are some pictures of what is up.

This is what I've been working on the last couple of weeks. Yep that's the tree we just bought.

I'm waiting on some polka dot ribbon to show up that I am going to use for garland. My email says that it just got shipped yesterday. I hope it comes soon! I'll post the finished tree when I'm really done with it.

 

A close up of the tree, I absolutely love those little puffy white balls, I wish there were more!

Here's the mantle. See how I only have three stocking hangers? I can't find  4th to match, so I guess I'll have to start over, so I'm waiting for the after Christmas sales? I'm not sure, but this year I bought some pretty awesome stockings, which I can't hang all of them, so I guess those stockings you'll have to wait to see on another day.

This tree is upstairs in Mr.'s Office and where Santa leaves his gifts. Mr. really likes colored lights, and random things on the tree, so this one is for him and the kids, something we can do as a family and not really care what it looks like, cause it's really just for us, and the lights are for the people outside.

Some of my favorite ornaments. Each year we've bought Baby Fox with the number he is turning from Hallmark. I think it only goes up to 5, so one more year, sniff, sniff.

Strawberry Shortcake, both my sister and I have this same ornament from when we were kids, and we both love it. The hook is the one from the 80's and totally old and worn out, but still does the job.

The ornament my grandparents bought me when I was still in Seoul and I was supposed to have been here for Christmas but wasn't.

I'm not sure if you have read of Dr. Suess's Horton Hatches the Egg, but my mom read it to us growing up, it can be related to adoption.  That no matter what you look like a mother can/is someone who raised you. I have the best parents in the world, and am lucky that they chose me to adopt.

When I get the rest of the decorations up, I'll snap pictures and show you guys, but for now that's most of it! Hope you enjoyed!