Farmhouse Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, again, and it feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I didn't get to decorate as early as I'd hoped, but I still got two trees up, the porch decorated, the hallway decorated and stockings were hung. It was a lovely Christmas here, just the two of us and the two doggies, and it was very low key and simple. I have lots of pics to share but let me start out with this one first:

Yes! This happened this past Saturday night at a local resort here in Asheville. After a really nice dinner, the man told me he wanted us to have our picture taken in front of this huge tree by the professional photographer, and much to my surprise, once we were in front of the tree and the photographer was busy snapping away, the man dropped to one knee and asked for my hand in marriage! Completely SHOCKED, as if you couldn't tell from the look on my face. lol 

Now, on to the holiday decorating pictures. My white office tree which is primarily decorated in minty pastel shades of green, blue and pink, with lots of vintage ornaments mixed in. 

 

 

 

 

 I've always had a 'themed' main room tree -- for several years it was blue and silver, then in 2008, I switched to copper and aqua and browns and that was my plan for my main floor tree this year until the man expressed his desire to have a colorful, non-matchy tree, which kind of gave me palpitations at first since I'm always so matchy-matchy on the main tree but after some thought, I decided why the heck not. I mean we live in this beautiful old farmhouse, so a mismatched, retro style theme would be perfect. 

Unfortunately, I requested my mom to bring my aqua and copper ornaments for the main tree, thereby leaving all of my retro, brightly colored ornaments in SC in their garage, but I scrounged up enough extras here that I've been hoarding for crafting purposes that I was able to pull off a retro themed tree!! I ended up loving it SO much that I doubt I'll go back to my formal-ish tree until/unless we move into a much bigger house that has a formal living room! 

 

 

Once I had the tree decorated with all the brightly colored Shiny Brites and West Germany and Poland ornaments, I figured I'd continue the vintage theme and use a vintage Christmas tablecloth as my tree skirt. I used one on the table too and filled my Tom and Jerry punch bowl with vintage ornaments and tinsel garland. 

 I've wanted to make a wreath like this for several years but never got around to it until now. It is huge and I love how it turned out. I used over 50' of vintage tinsel garland and over 70 vintage light bulbs. It is perfectly kitschy and I am tempted to hang it up inside year round! 

I continued the retro Christmas theme on the banisters of the stairs in our hallway. I put up green garland and then put ornaments every couple of spindles, hung from ribbons and topped with bows. I decided red and green was a good, old-timey look that went with the retro theme.

And I decided to hang up this vintage Santa Mail felt creation from 1957 by the door. I bought this thing back in 2011 at a rummage sale at an assisted living facility while I still lived in MD. It cost me a dollar but it is priceless to me. I love it so much!! It's holding all of the holiday cards I received this year! 

In our bathroom I put up my small tabletop tree and used pink and green ornaments on it. It's my tacky flamingo tree! I ended up putting the majority of my flamingo ornaments on the main tree because they are too heavy for the branches of this little tree but I still love it, even though it's mostly just the ball ornaments. I used some doilies I found last month at a thrift store to make a tree skirt for this one. 

In my office I have a couple of shelves above my desk that usually hold my spaghetti poodles and other dog decorations but I took those down for the holiday and put up my Gurley candles in their place. 

Despite not having children, we were still up by 7:30 yesterday, thanks to Mr. Marty. I don't know how he knew that it was Christmas, but he did, and he would NOT go back to sleep. He sat by our bedroom door, whining, until we got up and told him we'd go see what Santa brought. He was so excited. He sat right by the fireplace waiting for us to get their stockings down and pull out the goodies. Santa brought him and Scarlett 2 new toys each, some cookies and some sausages for puppies. And then they each got new fleece material for their beds. Marty got 2 bow ties and his sissy got a new coat, since she's always cold. 

As you can see from the following pictures, Scarlett was not at all interested in being awake at 7:30, nor was she interested in gifts. Marty played with the toys and then took a nap. That was how the day went, actually. We opened gifts, ate breakfast, took naps, ate lunch, took more naps and generally were lazy like sloths! It was the perfect day. I said last Christmas that this year I hoped to be in the mountains having a nice, quiet, low key Christmas and that is exactly what happened!

I am so excited for 2014 and all of the wonderful new beginnings we'll have. We are planning to wed sometime next year, though we have no idea where or when. The man starts a new job in January, for which we are both very thankful and excited about. After several really depressing years, I have to say that this year has been amazing and I know 2014 will be even better.