Christmastime is Here

Merry Christmas! It’s here! We’ve been decorating inside and out, shopping for gifts, and the Christmas activities have begun! This past weekend we went to our downtown’s Dickens Christmas and on Sunday night our church had its Christmas party, both of which were a lot of fun. Oh, and we are working our way through our Christmas movies lineup which is always one of our favorite parts of the holiday. Another exciting thing which has nothing to do with Christmas is that I got a new iPhone which is much faster and allows me to finally load my photos on my blog–yay! So, I thought I would jump back into blogging with some Christmas decorating.

After two years of trying an artificial tree, we’ve gone back to a real one from our local tree farm which is a holiday tradition we missed.

Every year I use the same decorations but change out the ribbon if I want a different color scheme. This year I went with classic red and green plaid!

My daughter helped me hang the staircase garland. I told her I was going for uneven, sweeping, and cascading so I added an extra section of garland this year to give it that extra drama.

I also wanted to make sure it looked good from all directions because last year I noticed it looked pretty flat on the back which is what you see when walking up the stairs, so I wove it more on both sides.

I’m kept it simple on my kitchen table and actually we’re getting a new table this week so this will change a little.

I had set some dishes out for some lunch company one day which I’ll tell you about in a minute, but it just makes me so happy to have red dishes out again.

Our baking corner has a few fun touches. We don’t use store flour too much except around the holidays, so these big jars always get brought out and filled for Christmas baking, complete with a gingerbread scoop! (The big jar is AP flour and the smaller jar is bread flour. I keep my fresh milled grains in the freezer.)

And speaking of baking, the company I had for lunch were some church friends who came over to learn sourdough baking! We had such a fun day together baking and eating.

I had several loaves out on display when they arrived.

I’m working on my holiday designs. Above is a design with Christmas wreaths and below are Christmas trees. I’m also working on putting together some sourdough tutorial posts and look forward to sharing that soon now that I’ve got my tech issues settled.

The pets are enjoying Christmas too. Floyd and Barney are enjoying the tree a little too much! Don’t let this peaceful picture of Barn fool you–I’ve already found one chewed up ornament under the coffee table and several more pulled off the tree thanks to this bad doggie. And Floyd thinks it’s fun to pull off the little pinecones and play hockey around the house…..at 3:00 in the morning! But oh, how we love them!

Ok friends! That’s all for today. Thanks for popping in! I hope your Christmas season is off to a wonderful start!