Tweedledo: Christmas Decorations 2011

I know.

I am finally posting my Christmas decorating ideas online after promising friends months ago that I would do so.

So here it is:

I found this nativity scene at the thrift store a few years ago, and I love it. It was placed on the piano. It was clearly handmade, and looks like it could have been a Boy Scout project or something. Nativity scenes are usually pricey, so looking at thrift stores is a good place to start:

I don't really have a lot of Christmas decorations, so what works for me is to put your basic holly berrys, pinecones, and greenery in every container that I have. I collect vintage Ball jars and cheese dome (to use as cloches), and I am always putting something different in them every holiday season:

Just put pinecones on the candlesticks I already had from the thrift store and add greenery. It was pretty simple to decorate this armoire:

I have these antique "frogs". They were used to brush horse hair. Many people collect them to display vintage postcards, emphmera, and pictures. I just break out my scrapbook items and look for a word to spell, then put the scrap embelly items away when I am done. For Christmas 2011 I spelled the word Joy:

I love hanging pinecones from my vintage window frame. The star is my old topper for the Christmas tree. I no longer have a tree, and have a "flat" fabric tree that I hung up for the last two years. I move the star around whenever I feel like it:

I love decorating my vintage 1940 Hoosier hutch. I just basically change what I put in the vintage Ball jars or vintage milkglass containers. I shop my house all the time and move things around. This is the first ro. Each Ball jar has fake snow and silver glittery ornaments:

The second row has jars of candy canes, silver star ornaments hung from old hooks that formerly probably held tea cups. The center holds a vintage cloche that I got for $4 from the thrift store. They sell for $40 at antique stores. I spray painted the base red and put vintage ornaments inside with fake snow on the bottom:

The third row I tried to make like Santa's sweet shop with items I already had. The last and forth row at the time holds my gumball machines that I collected. They are made with real metal and glass. I sometimes put holiday candy inside them:

My favorite decoration is the candy dispenser machine I got a few years ago. It was decorated the same as last year:

I recently found another vintage scale in my favorite colors of red and white. I shopped my house and made this little decorative area for the corner of my kitchen. I added a bunch of glittery red stars around the house, and here is one place I put it:

I made a chalkboard for my preschool class. They used it one time and haven't used it since. Instead of storing it away to collect dust, I turned it into a wonderful decorative idea b¥ putting it on top of the cabinet and for it to be used each month by simply wiping off the chalk and create a new banner or message. This month is Santa's Cafe sign:

I had leftover stuff from a tree I no longer have so I used it to decorate the chandelier:

Here is my favorite that I have been doing the last 18 months: changing the theme of items in the jars. This month is pretty close to last year, Santa's Apothecary:

This bowl decorates the bottom shelf in the front foyer. I just added pine cones and leftover red bead decorations:

This holly berry wreath used to be my chandelier decoration each year. This year it was given new life and placed over a metal decorative element that sits in my foyer:

I have greenery I don't really care for, but instead of tossing it, it went into the vintage wood box that I have by the front door. I hoped to have a real plant on the plant stand, but never got around it it, so I have this old fake tree decoration that was placed on that instead:

Fake greenery in my plant pot by the front door:

And finally the Powell family tree, kindly referred as Flat Tree. I was remodeling and painting last year and our old fake tree finally passed away. Instead of buying another tree to get in the way, I made a flat tree. And the kids loved it, and requested it be the holiday tree every year from now on. I moved the Ikea bookcase shelf from this area to the kitchen and placed the tree on this wall. The red ribbon is hot glued on the green burlap tree. The lights is stapled on, and the star is stapled on. The ornaments go through the holes in the burlap. The tree beforehand got rubbed down with cloves spice powder, cinnamon spice powder and pine essential oil to make it smell Christmasy, and the kids enjoyed helping me with that:

I display the Santa bed candy dish every year. My mom had one when I was real little back in I think 1980, it was made by her sister (my aunt) with her ceramic mold, and it was my most favorite Christmas decoration ever as a kid. My aunt kept the mold over the years, and her daughter who is now my SIL made me one for Christmas sometime I think in 1999. I made one new thing for a Christmas decoration: I photoshopped a Santa's List and printed it out and added it to the clipboard I had for years: