Christmas at our house

Originally inspired by Tracey at Notes from a Cottage Industry to participate in her holiday decorations home tour, I took a bunch of pictures trying a myriad of settings on my new digital camera. I hadn't had time to online optimize the pictures until now, so...better late than never I suppose !

I'm going to divvy these up into a few posts so I can keep the pictures the way I want without too much fussing with the html (no, Patience is not my middle name!)

The (faux) Fireplace

The faux fireplace used to be Gram's (aka Big Emily who my daughter is named after). I did spent some time re-doing the finishes to coordinate with my home decor and hopefully Gram would have liked it. This is just one of my few prized items that belonged to her.


The nativity scene in the "fire" section was Gram's as well. It's very old and some type of plaster/chalk combination and some pieces are chippy or missing an ear here or there. She used to always display it in this way, but with some hay. Having three cats makes that impossible.

The Twelve Days of Christmas scherenschnitt that my mother did. Every year I say I want to re-frame it more nicely with a matt, but inevitably it gets put away with the decorations as I recieved it. The lovely baby feather tree next to it was a gift from one of my secret sister swaps.

My new feather tree ! oooh, I love it so much! Usually, every year we have two trees, one in the living room and one in the dining room. The "dining room" tree didn't happen this year in the midst of remodeling four rooms (there is no room in there!) and we decorate it as the partridge in the pear tree. This year my lovely new feather tree got the partridge and pear ornaments treatment. Next to it is the Christ the King planter, again from Gram ... she might not be with us physically anymore, but she is everywhere.