{Holiday} White, Gold, Fluffy Christmas Village!

Being that this is our first house, and our first Christmas season in our first house, I wanted to treat myself to some special decorations that would last us a few years.

We have a beautiful fireplace in our living room on which our stockings hang, but I wanted to add a little something extra to the boring floor in front of it. A little dreamy Christmas village!

Cute, right? As you can briefly see, we have a red wall in our living room, and we also have some cream coloured furniture (you'll have to wait until the new year for a peak at that!). Already pretty Christmassy! It wasn't too difficult to pick gold as an extra accent colour.

How cute is that dear? I found him and the light-up acorn tree at my local HomeSense. The minute I saw them I fell in love and had to buy them. Walking through another isle of the store 2 minutes later, I found the gold gift box. I actually squealed out loud (which my husband is used to but I don't think the customers around me were). I had to buy it as well. That was it - I had created my little village in my head now.

But wait! It needed one more thing... snow! Not the cottony flat stuff I normally pick up, but soft, fluffy, dreamy looking snow. Then my brain sprinted through a few past shopping trips and, ding ding ding! I remembered this beautiful fluffy Flokati rug I saw at Walmart... for only $20! Done deal.

What do you think? What would you add? Have you created your own little dreamy Christmas village somewhere in your home? Share in the comments! :)

--Anita

{Holiday} DIY Budget-Friendly Personalized Christmas Stockings

I love that I started this blog in December - it means that I get to share a bunch of my Christmas projects! I love Christmas. Actually, love is an understatement. Christmas makes me all warm and fuzzy and giddy inside! All the lights, decor, people getting together and appreciating what they have, cheesy made-for-tv Hallmark movies... I love it all, and I love getting into the spirit of things. But I, like many others, do have a budget when it comes to decorations, and buying ~$15 personalized stockings isn't exactly within it. Enter the DIY version! And it was easy peasy.

Materials needed:

• Budget Stockings (I found these at the local dollar store for $2)
• Embellishments (Also found at my local dollar store!) 
• Glue gun

(Please excuse the first few phone pics... it was all I had at hand when I made these.)

For these stockings, I wanted to go really simple and clean. I just wanted our names at the top.

First, I placed the letters on the stockings the way I wanted them. Then I simply glued them in place with my glue gun. That's it! Two easy steps!

And now the pretty photos of the completed set! The third mini stocking you see there is for our dog Milo, and it was also found at the dollar store for $1.25! Cute, right?

Amazing how something so simple can give a cheap stocking a little more punch. Have you decided to customize your own stockings this year? Share them in the comments!

--Anita

{Holiday} Christmas Gift Wrapping - White with coloured ribbon

Last year I had a lot of fun planning how I was going to wrap up my gifts. I spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking for ideas. I was finally inspired by a few pins and I created my theme: white wrapping with thin ribbon. Since I was on a budget and didn't think buying plain white commercial wrapping paper was worth the cost, I used what I had readily available - plain white printer paper!

It turned out great! Every person had a different colour ribbon. I also made little gift tags (templates found here and here) with cardstock to match the ribbon colour.

For the people receiving gift cards, I nestled them in a Christmas card with a white envelope, and wrapped them with ribbon in the same way. It really added a little something special to a plain gift card.

 Got any other fun ideas to wrap gifts? Leave them in the comments! :)

--Anita