The Living Room is Covered in Christmas!

The Halls are Decked!  Well, I guess what I mean is that our house is covered in Christmas decor! This is our first year decorating anything beyond our Christmas tree, so it was very fun and special for us. Overall I wanted to stick with the traditional white, gold, silver and red Christmas colors for the first time we full out decorated, as I thought it would match the old traditional feel of our house. Next year though, who knows... already pondering that!

Here's a look into the living room!

When we first looked at our house, I remember looking at the banister and thinking 'Ooo, I can put garland on that during Christmas!' Thankfully, I did it this year! Last Christmas we were too caught up in renovation chaos so I never got to decorating and then for the rest of 2010 I thought 'why the heck didn't' I just do it?' So finally I did it!

I used more of the music note ribbon I talked about in our tree blog along with some cute music note ornaments I found. Here's the super close up! Oh, and since we are this close to it, I thought I'd give a shout out to the amazing job I did (patting my back) sanding, refinishing and painting our banister!

On to the Mantel! I'm still thankful Alex built this mantel or we wouldn't have one to decorate! I used the garland on our windows and banister and wanted to try something different on the mantel.  I had to keep in mind the fact that we now use our fireplace and need to make sure the decor is far enough away from the opening.

So I used more of the music note ribbon along the top trim and added some large pine cones up top. I left our regular frames and decor on the outside, that antique measuring stick is still my favorite!

I found the 'Merry Christmas' banner at Target for $4, that I thought was really cute and it coordinates with the music note ribbon colors perfectly. You can also see our stockings, had to hand those off to the sides so Alex can continue building fires (it is his new favorite thing).

Here is the garland on our window frames with more of the ribbon and snowflake ornaments. I have this arrangement over each window in the living room, and love the extra texture it gives the room! I'm not going to lie though, this is real garland we got at the tree farm and it was a pain in the butt!  Worse than the tree, pine needles were everywhere in the house and it fell off twice! But, after a few adjustments...... it is beautiful!

The dining room is up next!  Will post pictures tomorrow!

PS!  We joined the DIY Showoff Holiday Linky Party!  So many great ideas to look through!