Hello, Christmas!

Lately I’ve been listening to my giant Christmas playlist nonstop, which everyone should go listen to right now because it’s perfect and I love it so much. Last year I played it over and over while baking cookies and doing things around the house with Oliver in the Ergo. (This year he’s running around, playing with tupperware and taking his baby owl ornament off the tree..) What makes this extra awesome is about four or five wizard rock songs from a circa-2005 Harry and the Potters Christmas album that Jeremy and I listened to every Christmas for a few years. Then I got a new ipod and didn’t transfer it and forgot all about it, but we found it this year and I added it to my playlist immediately. NOSTALGIA! (Only two songs are in the Spotify catalog, so the other ones don’t show up on the playlist when I share it with people. Booo. For those interested, it’s called A Magical Christmas of Magic and it’s awesome. If you like songs about Harry Potter.)

So anyway, not to be all goofy and gooey again, but my god I love this house. When we bought it I knew it would be beautiful at Christmas, and it SO is. The brick makes everything feel so cozy, and it’s just.. wonderful. I can’t wait to try out the fireplace, although that makes me pretty nervous because we’ve never had a working fireplace so ahhhhhh. This is the first time we’ve ever decorated the outside of anywhere,, and our first live tree since we lived in St. Louis! So many firsts!

I’ve been collecting vintage Christmas stuff here and there this year– what an addictive hobby. Everything’s so gorgeous! Or creepy and weird, depending on how you look at it. I happen to think giant Santa head blow molds are the best thing ever and not strange and terrifying, so there you go. I didn’t get one this year (or my army of Dakin reindeer) but it’ll happen! Next year will be kitsch and blow mold overload.

I bought these two mugs together on Ebay because I love the contrast. Regular Santa looks like he’s gettin’ real tired of Winking Santa’s shit.

(Note: We decorated our pictures for Halloween and kept the bandit mask on Oliver because it’s adorable.)

I need about 25 more knee-huggers, I think. At least.

If you follow me on instagram, you’ve already seen the wreath and how I made it a few weeks ago. I love the look of vintage ornament wreaths but I didn’t want to buy tons of ornaments, so I found some vintage tinsel and cute ornaments on Etsy and happened to stumble on a ton of cheap Shiny Brites at a local flea market/antique place. I was going to add the vintage red/silver garland, but it looked weird so now it’s on the tree. I used a foam wreath form and my trusty hot glue gun and the whole thing took about thirty minutes. I love it!