Other Christmas Trimmings

I've gone easy this year on the decor, mainly because we have just been so focused on the major final touches for living downstairs again, that I just want to sit and enjoy it all now.  Other than the tree, I've put up just a few things here...

A while back I bought a package of Christmas balls from Value Village for $1.99 and put a bunch of them in glass jars.  They're fairly close to the tree and I love how they catch the light and sparkle just a little brighter...



For next year, I'd like to maybe make a tray to put those glass jars on and add a few other things.  It also needs some major height, you can see how tiny they look haha...

But for this year, that's all.  I'm just wanting to enjoy sitting down here.  Next year, it's on!  Not that I ever really go all out anyways...

I hung our stockings on the hutch this year.  Normally I hang them on the staircase, but the stairs and railings are so nast from all the demo and dust I don't really want them touching.

To an outsider's view the stockings may appear a little creepy haha, but I love them so much.  Every one of my many cousins was each knitted either a Santa stocking or an Elf stocking by one aunt or another.  It's the only stocking I've ever had and I love my Santa.  My sister had the Elf in our family.  Once Darryl and I bought our house and he didn't have a stocking, I asked my aunt to make him one, and I think maybe there had actually been an extra laying around that they gave him.

And on the back door hangs our advent calendar which is also so special to me.  It's an exact replica of the one my sister and I, and several of my cousins grew up with.  Most of our aunts made one for their kiddies and every day we would alternate putting an ornament up on the tree.  And we'd love trying to figure out which ornament was newly added each day. 

A little closer...

A little closer still...

There she is in all her sequenced and felted glory

So the year my sister moved out and was about to have her first Christmas away from home, I wanted her to have a piece of home with her.  My mum, my dad and I all chipped in and made her an exact replica of the one we grew up with.  The next year I moved out and as my Christmas gift, my parents and my sister had all made me my own!  Oh, there were tears!

One thing I'll have to get back into next year is painting our front windows.  Growing up, my mum would paint these amazing Christmas scenes on our front bay window and I would love watching her work (and lay on the floor with my markers and paper and try to copy her) and seeing the painting every time I walked home from school.  And I loved how my dad would put out spotlights so her work could be seen at night too.  It's always been a great Christmas memory for me.

Our first Christmas here I wanted to try my own.  I wasn't sure how it would go or if I'd have the stamina to want to finish it, so I picked some really really simple Christmas cards to work from (I'm not great at free-handing but I can be a pretty good mimic!)...

I couldn't get rid of that glare!  You can kind of see the spots on Santa's shirt and the reindeer's back where condensation started dripping and erasing my paints away!  But now that we've updated our windows and they are no longer single panes nor 91 years old, I think that issue won't be a problem anymore.

Christmas for me is about traditions and memories more than anything else.  I'm a pretty sentimental gal so I couldn't dream about ever replacing my stockings or advent calendar, no matter how outdated they may be! 

What Christmas traditions do you love and remember from your childhood?  Have you carried them on into your own home?  Have you kept any retro Christmas decor?