Christmas Tour

Merry Christmas to you all!  Welcome to the Girls in White Dresses stop on the Holiday Home Tour!

Come on in to the foyer, and you’ll see an area I love.  It’s filled with some of my favorite things, including a Christmas gift I bought myself earlier this year …

… my favorite aspect of Christmas is the music, and one example of the Christmas music I love is The Nutcracker.

Turn it on …

… and look!  The curtain is opening!

It goes through four scenes and eight different pieces from the ballet.  I just love it (and so do my piano students and other visitors).

Yes, I did take the girls (and a friend) to the actual Nutcracker Ballet (with dessert afterwards!) as well this year; it’s an annual treat I really look forward to.

Back to the tour …

Beneath the Nutcracker is a lowly nativity, reminiscent of Christmas’s greatest gift.  The girls made it, and of course I love it.

I love books – Christmas books, or any books at all, really.  This is a favorite new book I received this year, written and illustrated by one of my favorite children’s authors, Jan Brett.  If you live or work with kids – or if you just enjoy beautiful things – you owe it to yourself to explore Jan Brett’s world.

I have almost all of my childhood Christmas books as well.  Here’s one:  Baby’s Santa Mouse.  I also had (and still have) a pin of the little mouse.  I was fascinated by this book because the illustrations were actually photos.  They looked so real.

On to the living room, it’s the Christmas tree …

Our Christmas tree is full of color … colorful lights (while it’s true that white lights look classier, I just like the down-home look and feel of colored lights), colorful ornaments.  No boxed, matchy-matchy ornaments here; no, you’ll find dozens of ornaments from my childhood …

… ornaments I made, ornaments my mom made, ornaments my kids made … all homey, cozy and bright.

The tree skirt, updated each year with a new ornament and the girls’ handprints around it.

The girls have a tree for their ornaments:

It was the tree I used in my classroom when I taught (back then, we were stilled allowed to have a Christmas tree in our classroom; my girls’ school now has none of that).  As you can see, it’s just about reached its limit of ornaments.  Dilemmas, dilemmas … 🙂 .

Ah, the advent calendar.  Each year, the girls love the advent calendar with little chocolates for each day.  We usually share one, but thanks to an aunt and uncle, this year each girl has her own calendar.  They have loved this!

In the kitchen, we have the Jesse Tree (actually we repurposed the Easter Egg Tree into the Jesse Tree).  This is a project our church is doing this year to help us focus on the reason for the season; each night we read a Bible passage and put up an ornament signifying some aspect of the story of Jesus’ arrival into this world.

More from our house can be seen on last year’s tour.  It’s been so nice having you over; thank you for stopping by!

I know you need to be hurrying on now, because there are so many other lovely places to explore … here and here, and here too!

Merry, merry Christmas to you and your family!