A Cozy Christmas Season

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Ours turned out to be lovely after a rather bumpy week. My husband was sick over the weekend and ended up not going to work on Monday. On Tuesday, he thought he was better enough and went to work. He lasted less than an hour before being sent home and told to get a Covid-19 test. After being tested, he came home and slept the majority of the week away.  When he was awake, he had a tiny cough and was a bit achy, but mostly just very, very tired. On Thanksgiving, he woke up feeling much better. By late afternoon, his test results came back negative. We are so thankful! So, we don't know what he had...just some weird virus or perhaps the flu (although he did have his flu shot). 

Thanksgiving was a light affair. I took more shortcuts than usual. We had store bought rolls and store bought pumpkin pie. I did make homemade stuffing, apple pie, and mashed potatoes. We asked the advice of the county extension office, who informed us that anything my mother intended to eat should be cooked in her house and then returned to our home. This would be best so as not to infect her. So she cooked the turkey and baked the apple pie, took a portion before it came back to us. We played Yard Yahtzee, watched The Crown and had an evening bonfire. I used my Spode plates this year instead of getting out all of the fine china. Each of our Spode plates are different, and I am slowly collecting them from a charity thrift store that runs a huge estate sale twice a month. It was an easy and light Thanksgiving.

My husband shocked me last weekend when he said that we could go out and buy our Christmas tree. He is a real stickler for tradition and waiting until the day after Thanksgiving is our tradition. However, I asked him if we could do it early since new restrictions were going into effect, and I just wanted to knock out as much shopping as possible before. His replied, "Whatever makes you happy." We were off and away within the hour before he changed his mind ~ lol. We decided to get two trees this year (one representing his childhood and one representing mine). The kids really don't want much in the way of gifts for Christmas. They are content. They miss travel, friends and events much more than stuff, so why fill the house with more of that? We decided to channel our funds this year into making Advent and Christmas big in family fun, events, and cherished memories. We decided to pull out ALL of the decorations and go wild (as my husband said when he made it out of bed after a few days and saw what Anne and I had done). Here is a little tour of our cozy Christmas home.

Our Library (the living room)

We put the Fraser fir in the library. That is the type of tree that my husband grew up with and what we have mostly had over the years. My childhood tree will appear when we get to the kitchen.

We put our Sarah, Plain and Tall Village and electric candles with fresh greenery cut from the back yard on our fireplace. Our fireplace doesn't work, because we haven't invested the money into repairing the inside and outside of the chimney. 

We placed the stockings on the bookcases.

We placed an angel and Boomer's ornament on his ashes.

One of my favorite "nativity" pieces (escape to Egypt)

Anne decided to add her small artificial table top tree to our library this year. We turned it into a snowman tree.

We even set up the nativity, which traditionally goes up on the first day of Advent, but nothing is quite the same this year. The Star of David chain that is woven through the figures is from my husband's childhood. The chain was purchased in the Middle East when he was a toddler and his military family was stationed in Saudi Arabi. Since his name is David, the chain was a nod to him each Christmas and was placed on their tree in a place of honor. It is very fragile and lovingly worn so I didn't want it to get tangled in the tree.

Lastly, we put the carolers in the library. The room is so cozy to sit in at night with all the Christmas cheer and lights.

Our Kitchen/Dining Room

We haven't done very much in the dining area yet (which is really part of our eat-in kitchen...this house doesn't have a formal dining room). The table centerpiece is still set up for Thanksgiving. We placed the smaller tree in this area. It is a white pine and what I grew up with in my childhood home every year. They are hard to find here in the south and are more expensive than Fraser firs. That is just the opposite of my childhood farther north. The kids decided that this tree was a female and named her Mrs. Patmore after the cook in Downton Abbey. We didn't add lights and kept the decorations very simple with homemade ornaments, fresh flowers, snowflakes and bells. It is our old-fashioned Christmas tree. 

Lastly, I will show you all my sink. It has been a goal for several months now to make sure all of the dishes are clean and the sink is shined before I go to bed. It makes for a nice start to the day to awake to a clean fresh start each morning. I added a bit of Christmas cheer to make the start of each day even brighter.

Wow, this post got long. I still have the snowman and Advent display areas to show. However, I will wait for another post and explain all of our plans for Advent. Hopefully, I will get that up before the first of December.

Blessings, Dawn