28 January 2015

Another Farmhouse Christmas -- a month late!

Hey folks. I hope you had a lovely holiday season. Of course, I am late, late, late posting a blog about our Christmas. That seems to be par for the course with me these last few years though. 

We had a wonderful Christmas here in our new-to-us farmhouse. It is SO much bigger than the last place and we were anxious to decorate, though next year we've plans for even bigger and better decorations. 

We had 3 full size trees this year, though truthfully the one in the dining room is entirely too short for that space. With 10' tall ceilings, a 6.5 foot tree just looks silly. Beautiful, but silly. We have plans to acquire some taller trees over the summer so that in November, we will be able to decorate our main floor with trees that are more suitable for such tall rooms. 

Like last year, our 'main' tree was in the dining room and had a huge assortment of vintage ornaments in all colors. It took several hours to decorate but the end result was totally worth it. Don't you agree? 




My office tree is always my favorite with the pastel colors and vintage ornaments. This year, I put all of my vintage angels in one spot. I never realized that I had a collection of angels. An unintentional collection, I suppose. I put them and my Gurley candles on the shelves near my desk. 




Our main bathroom got kitschy with my flamingo ornaments and decorations. Makes it feel all tropical despite the freezing temperatures in the house. 



These little trees usually go by the front door, outside, but we never use our front door to come in/out, so I brought them inside this year. I think I'll try to find some tall, skinny trees before next Christmas. As you can tell, our hallway is huge. I jokingly call it our bowling alley. 


On my ugly old Louis Vuitton trunk, I put my small collection of Santa blow molds, and above it I hung up the vintage light bulb wreaths I made. 



The beautifully wide staircase got the same treatment as last year -- garland and traditional red and green ornaments with bows. I think I'll search for fluffier/wider garland next year. 



The dining room has an awesome fireplace that's been closed off but it retains its original mantel so I left some of my milkglass vases and put some of my Christmas decorations on there, too. The stockings are new but I love that they have that retro look to them. 


Even the coffee cafe room got a small tree this year! I had this in my bathroom in Maryland in 2007 but it fits perfectly here. 


I kept the outside decorations to a minimum this year. We're still unsure what the rental agency is planning on doing with our non-existent driveway but right now, we use the backdoor exclusively, so that's what I decorated. Next year, we'll do up the front but we just ran out of time this year. I put this old sled I bought in 2004 by the backdoor and hung some greenery on it, and hung a pair of itty bitty ice skates on it. 


I am kind of embarrassed to admit that my decorations are still up! It is freezing cold in this old house, with no central heat, so the decorations at least seem fitting. And they make me smile which is kind of hard to do when the house is 38-40 degrees. lol I realize that it's time to take it all down and pack it away for 10 months. I think I'll start decorating in early November this year so that I can fully enjoy it. 

Anyway, it's already the end of January (how'd that happen?!) and we're having a very non-snowy winter here in the mountains of western NC. I am disappointed, to say the least because I LOVE snow. We keep having snow in the forecast and the peaks are getting snow but not here in the valley. At this point, I'm kind of over winter -- if it's not going to snow, let's just move on to spring. We anticipate having a lot of visitors this spring/summer/fall. We live in a vacation destination and thankfully have a house big enough to accommodate guests now. We have a lot of plans to do landscaping and outdoor projects to make it more visitor friendly and well, we can't do that until it warms up. So, if we aren't going to get snow, it might as well go ahead and be spring, right? 

Hopefully I will be back soon with more pics of our place. I get so caught up in keeping up with inventory in my 3 Etsy shops, plus Instagram, and the daily tasks of running a house, that I forget all about blogging for months at a time. I need to be better about that this year. 

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