12. Start a Collection of Christmas Decorations

Hi! Thanks to all who saw my surprise Sunday blog post, & gave suggestions on how to handle our cabin fever. Ben went hunting this morning, and said it doesn't look like the roads will be able to melt today either. Yikes! No Frozen for me. :(

As you may know, I made a 101 in 1001 list a few months ago. If you haven't checked it out.. do so, here. :) It's been so fun to work through the goals, and so many of them have just happened naturally. What? Well, as I've tried to pursue intentional living in different ways, following through with goals has come too. I've had tons of help, it's been such an encouragement how many people have wanted to help me follow through with these things. I updated a few this morning! Looking at my list can seem so intimidating at times, but I'm okay with the fact that some of these things may not be completed. All that matters to me is being able to look back in 2016 (WOW!) and be flooded with a bunch of lovely memories. If we haven't been to a horse race by then, I'll be just fine.

Today, I want to share a bit about how I started collecting Christmas decorations for our home, as a part of a #12daysofblogging linkup!

Saying that last Christmas was total chaos is a huge understatement. The actual holiday wasn't at all.. it was joyful and great. We got married 4 days after Christmas. So to us, it felt like we crammed in a bunch of stuff right before our wedding, all while trying to do last minute prep for that too. It was just a lot. I think that's why I was so intense about finishing all Christmas shopping before December showed it's face. We arrived back from our honeymoon and then immediately started student teaching. So basically I skipped over a glorious time that could have been Victoria shopping for Christmas things for 80% off at Target.

I don't believe that these things are what fills our home with Christmas cheer... but they're fun and special to us. As you may know, I'm really passionate about decorating our home in a way that welcomes others and creates a simplified, beautiful environment for our little family on a daily basis. I'm not a crazy neat freak for the sense of being a neat freak.. but I want living life in our house to be simple. I don't want us to be digging through drawers every time we need something, wasting time that could be spent in other, happy ways. All of that being said... I was excited for a pretty Christmas house. I was also determined to do it on our normal budget. You can read more about how "intense" we are with our dollaroonies, here.

I bought all of our Christmas things from Target, Hobby Lobby, and World Market. We've been given a few different ornaments here and there, but everything I bought came from one of those places.

I had intentions of having lots of nice photos of our decor for you today, but the snowed in nature of our daily lives has put a gloom over everything. This one, favorite photo of mine will do. :)

I started picking things up right when Christmas started to take over stores. Normal stores, not Hobby Lobby in August. :) All of our ornaments are (gasp!) plastic. :) They came in two big $15 packages from Target and I love them. It was nice to not worry about anything breaking, and I think they're beautiful. I'll probably keep them around until we are a) old b) they break. One day, someday... we'll have babies and they won't be able to easily break our plastic Target ornaments. Our tree topper also came from Target. Our ruffled burlap tree skirt came from World Market. My mother in law bought that for us but I made sure to send her a coupon. :) In other places of the house we have really simple, mostly gold and white decor. There are two red knit stockings hanging from our bedposts. I wrapped garland around our dining room windows. I put a deer figurine (that we keep up year round) in a cloche to make it appear more "Christmassy"! We bought a few little $5 trees to scatter around the house to carry the holiday throughout. With the exception of our tree, I probably spent around $150. For some this may be a fortune, for others a penny. But I pulled from different areas of our budget and tried to start our little collection with wisdom, and style. I also purchased a few things with my monthly spending money in October at the Magnolia Fall Show.

My goal was to get some simple things that I could display in different ways for years to come. I bought everything before Thanksgiving week, so we didn't have to run out for anything last minute. What has preparation for Christmas looked like for y'all? I'd love to hear any tips that you might have! :)