Christmastime is here!

My husband said that I wasn't allowed to celebrate Christmas until December. Well guess what fools - today is December 1st! (24 more sleeps till Christmas!!)...but that really didn't stop me from Christmas celebrations at our house. I've been listening to Christmas music since...July...and I put up decorations the Monday after Thanksgiving.

As with decorating my house, I'm all about decorating within my means (aka not spending a lot of money) and doing a lot of DIY to make my home 'my home'. Christmastime is no different! I already posted about decorating in preparation for the holidays, but this time I have gone all out and put up Christmas-y things to usher in the Advent season!

I'm all about using what you have (or in my case -- using what you've hoarded) around the house...and things that are free. It also helps that I have a mother-in-law who is the craft/DIY queen and a Christmas decorator extraordinaire - I have inherited many of her old decorations and other fun DIY things. When my husband was living on his own, his mom came and Christmas-bombed his house, complete with a fat Santa cookie jar, wreaths and Christmas lights.

I didn't know I was obsessed with Nutcracker statues until I saw a bajillion of them at Marshalls during Black Friday shopping. Luckily for me, I resisted the urge of buying all of them and found this man hanging out in my mother-in-law's Christmas box in our attic. #score

I love this decoration. I've seen tons of DIY/craft ideas using branches to hang things, and decided that if I found the right branch, I would make it into an ornament tree. As you can see, I found said branch and I also found awesome little ornaments in the Christmas box. I made two yarn pom-pom ornaments to complete the look. Oh! Remember that time I channeled my inner squirrel and hoarded little acorns from my backyard as vase fillers? They appear again as an anchor for my branch...collected this time by my loving husband. He sat outside with a flashlight one night and collected every acorn in that vase #truestory #besthusbandever

*Reason #2356763 why I am a crazy lady: I saw this branch lying in my in-laws' backyard while we were over for Thanksgiving and I immediately knew it was the one. I asked my mother-in-law if I could take/keep this branch I found, and she looked at me like I was a crazy fool. (She was all like "Who asks if they can take a branch from someone's yard?")

I have never had a real tree in my life. My family lived overseas for a good part of my childhood and access to a classic Christmas tree was only made possible by loving relatives mailing us a plastic one. I also get headaches when I smell live Christmas trees, so plastic is the way to go! And this year, our 2-foot fake tree is the perfect fit for our little family and our little home.

And finally, my favorite decorated piece...

The breakdown:
Deck board sign made by my mother-in-law.
Pine cones collected from a nearby school yard and hot glue-gunned to twine.
Christmas lights were in the Christmas box.
Window is usually there year-round; came from old church building that got renovated.
Red wire Santa sleigh has been hoarded since high school; was given to me with chocolates in it.
Old Christmas card of two people wrapped up in scarves and hats in the snow #cutenessoverload

So that's what's going on at our house! What have you done to decorate this year? What things have you made? I would love to see what you've done!

Decorating 'n stuff

I love to decorate. And I love crafting. Decorating with crafts? #brbdying

Seriously though, when I find a craft and pin it on my Pinterest board, my mind will not stop thinking about the craft until I do it.

So I went to doing! Here's the stuff I've been up to as of late:

So I love Goodwill. Not just because I can find amazing items for Halloween costumes, but because I can find jars and vases....and felted Christmas tree ornaments for a ridiculous price. I scoured Goodwills for months to collect milk glass vases and jars for my wedding for (at most) 50 cents a piece. These beauties happened to be marked .59 cents, but their blue tag was 50% off that day, so ended up getting 9 ornaments for a grand total of a bank-breaking $0.97. #booyah

These beauties are called acorns, and usually they are the bane of my husband's existence around this time of year. We have two huge trees that 'gift' us these little presents by a consistent drizzle of nuts hitting our grass-less ground. We try to mow the lawn, but these little fellas always manage to get chopped up and shot out...and embedded into the lawn-mower's shins (aka husband). Don't even get me started on the squirrels our yard attracts. Baxter probably has a forlorn blog out there somewhere about how he can never catch those pesky things...except for those three days a couple of a weeks ago where he successfully killed two squirrels. I channeled my inner squirrel and spent an afternoon picking the perfect little acorns for my fall-themed dinner table. I also pulled out our extra/unused 'redneck wine glasses' from our wedding and -- voila! A tablescape. I just need to find some candles to complete the look.

And finally! Look at what a girl can do with a hot glue gun, some twine, and pine cones collected in her neighborhood! Yes, I was that person on the side of the road on Saturday morning pretending to walk her dog. I brought Baxter along to make it look like it was normal for me to be stomping around pine straw to find the perfect pine cones (it kind of looks like I'm picking up his poop, right?...right?!?!).

The most addicting best part about crafting is that most of the time you save a whole lotta money and you can make your house look almost as cute as a Pottery Barn house (ok maybe not really, it's all in the imagination!). I always feel happy when I'm crafting, and the finished product always inspire me to keep crafting. Maybe it'll inspire you to start crafting too!

Around the house

On March 1st, the fiance moved into our rental home. This little brick house has a lot of charm, and we love everything about her (I've decided it's a 'her')! The craziest thing? Everything we prayed for, this little lady's got it; a fenced in back yard, at least 1 guest room, hall bathroom, open kitchen.

I've been here for a week, unpacking and decorating. Finally all my daydreaming and wishing up and down the housewares aisles at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods have become a reality. Wonderful friends and family threw us a joint engagement shower earlier this week, and the fiance and I were able to use a their generous gifts to start making this house a home.

I've talked before about budgeting and how the fiance and I have been working on being smarter with our money, especially as we prepare for our life together. Thanks to the shower and some gift cards saved from past birthdays (what up $75 Bed Bath and Beyond gift card from 2009), we have been able to decorate and furnish our home without having to spend any of the money we have been saving for our life post-wedding. I spent a lot of time doing some price matching and research online, and woke up earlier than usual just so I could spend ample time shopping and comparing prices, even when it meant going back to a store more than once to snag a deal. But once I had a plan, it was so much fun shopping and not having to take out my credit/debit card to pay for anything out of my own pocket.

We still need some pieces of furniture, but for the most part, we have everything we need. The one thing I love about this house is that a lot of the pieces you will find are hand-me-downs, with a whole lotta character. So without further adieu, I introduce you to my future home:

Hand-me-down dining room chairs...would you LOOK at that fabric!

And yes, that is an old school high chair...

Gifted china my parents never used; hand-me-down arm chairs and an awesome produce box

My love for patterns and designs exploded too.

Clockwise from L: spoon rest, drapes, rug, measuring cups

Linen napkins (on sale!), mason jar mugs

...and that's just the beginning (!). Can't wait to show you the rest of the house!!