DIY: Christmas Decorating

I do realize I'm jumping full-force into Christmas right from Thanksgiving, but I'm in the spirit so I hope you won't hold it against me! I spent the weekend hauling out the boxes of last year's decorations, and decided to make some new mantle decor (aaaaand this is how everything I do turns into a craft project).

I'm not a huge fan of traditional Christmas colors, so I kept everything gold and glittery and added a touch of soft vintage aqua. Our walls are already very colorful so including a lot of white-on-white helped keep things light and wintery.

I already had a few bottles and jars on the mantle, so I filled them with some aqua glass beads and gold glitter branches. We put the beads in our fishbowl too, so Vince could match ;)

I made three garlands; one of white pom poms threaded on a string, a beaded one that I strung by hand (I recommend patience for this) and a third garland of gold circles that I punched out of glitter paper.

I also picked up some plastic pears at the craft store, first painted them white, then with a thin layer of glue, and dusted them in an iridescent fine glitter. They are really sparkly in person, it reminds me snow!

Our final impulse idea was to write or draw on the mirror, and I'm so glad we decided to do this because it just ties everything together. We picked up a white glass paint marker and after a few rounds of practice on the bathroom mirror, I got it juuuust right on the second try. Thankfully this stuff erases easily! This was really fun, after I finished I started thinking of what else I could draw on.

Our fireplace is non-working, so unfortunately we can't have any cozy fires in our living room. It still felt like we needed something in the hearth, so we added some logs anyway. I can use just a little bit of imagination to see them in a crackling fire ;)

I'm glad that our decorating is finally done, our tree is up, and all I have to do is finish my shopping. Christmas is totally sneaking up on us now...have you started decorated yet?