A Simple Christmas

We decided that we were going to make Christmas simple this year once we started getting presents, so I thought I would extend that simplification process to decorating the home.

Instead of putting up decorations in every room, I thought it would make everything easier (and it did) to confine it to the most used room in the house...no, not the bathroom!

And not the kitchen either, but the front room. I may still do a little something in the kitchen since the rooms adjoin so nicely, but we'll see.

After last year's decorating the tree and various parts of the house, it was a little hard to not use every single bit and bob in my Christmas boxes, but just the thought of having to put them all away after the joyous season was enough of a reality check to keep me in control of my urge to do a simple Christmas.

Chris's job this year was to take some pictures while I kept shooing everyone away from trimming the tree. I meant for it to be a family activity, but I REALLY like my tree decorated a certain way....so we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas and everyone was really good at letting me do my thing.

And so, I present what happens when Chris takes pictures of decorating for Christmas:

Always charmed by out little princess (even if she's sitting in an awesome 90's motif high chair and has food on her jammies) he quickly got distracted away from decorations.

Back on task for a few minutes, he showed me rearranging a few things to make room for the tree.

And then he got distracted again by another cute little Christmas elf. And that's when it really went down hill with his assigned task.


He decided to do some self-portraits.

Thoroughly distracted by his assignment, no more pictures were taken of tree trimming or any of the already arranged decorations. Sigh.

Later, he did accept the new assignment of putting the kiddies to sleep while I finished decorating and properly taking pictures of our annual Christmas cheer.
Every year we get little Christmas books for the kids and arrange them on the side table, which is carried over from when I grew up.

The majority of our Christmas decor resides on our ever dependable book shelf.

I just love the smell of live Christmas trees, and in the past, that's what we always use. But sticking with the "let's make it simple" attitude, we got a small, pre-lit artificial tree that we can use in the future as the kid's tree, but I think it turned out pretty nice!

I just had to put up my little ceramic I painted years ago of Santa with his elves. It just makes me happy!

I was actually just placing a few things on the secretary not really meaning to keep them there as I got decorations out, but after looking at it again, I thought, "Hmm, I'll just leave it!" I really like our police officer nutcracker Chris's mom gave him last year, and since we got married in December, a left our wedding picture up too.

Next year I may decide to go completely opposite with my decorations and have a tree in every room like my fellow police wife/blog pal Stephanie. I LOVE the idea of having it jolly everywhere you look, love all of her themes and decorations, but for now, a nice simple Christmas fits just fine.

Though, I may still decorate in the kitchen...