it's the most wonderful time of the year . . . for holiday decorations!

If you haven't noticed yet, I like to craft. I love seeing cute things on Pinterest and then re-creating them or creating my own versions of them.

I already have enough everyday things on my walls and bookshelf etc., so this year when I've crafted, I've made a lot of holiday decor. I've done Thanksgiving crafts, Valentine's Day crafts, 4th of July crafts (yet to hit the blog since I made them after the holiday had passed) . . . and I've been making Christmas crafts throughout the year, all for this amazing month of December.

Some of my crafts fit in our apartment just fine:


Stockings . . . Can you guess whose is whose? ;)

Jingle bells . . . So we can hear Christmas every time we open the door!

Table decorations . . .

I made this years ago at some Relief Society thing with my mom.
I don't actually remember what I did to make it though . . . 

My mother-in-law used these lanterns for our Boise reception,
and now I've made them into Christmas decorations! :)

A wreath just waiting for more Christmas cards to arrive!

And my favorite wreath of mine--the candy cane wreath! :)

And our one store-bought decoration, a nutcracker, whose name is Nick or maybe something else . . . we can't remember! :)

But then I have other crafts and decorations that just don't fit in our apartment!:


A sign, with nowhere to hang it . . .

One project, inspired mostly by this pin is actually the whole reason I bought a free-standing shelf to go above our TV. We have no mantle, but I wanted a mantle to showcase decorations! So I bought this shelf, and worked on my trees, and the other day, I was so excited to finally put my trees on my mantle-shelf, only to find that they didn't fit!! I had never actually measured my trees against the shelf. Bad idea. So I'm still holding out for a future mantle, I suppose. Until then, my trees are chilling on the ground in front of the entertainment center.

Since my trees didn't fit, I tried our Nativity. But our Nativity has so many pieces that it didn't all fit, either! We had to take down a cow, goat, and sheep to make it fit like this.

But neither of those things are toooo bad; the real problem has been the tree. Our first Christmas together, we didn't have as much furniture as we had now. We only had one couch and we had not yet bought a bookshelf, so our tree fit perfectly in a corner of our apartment.

By our next Christmas, we had bought a bookshelf for that corner, so our tree had to find a new home. When you walk into our apartment, it is divided into the kitchen on the left, and the living room on the right. At that point, it was all open, so we just pretty much placed the tree in the middle of the two rooms. The placement wasn't as perfect as our first year, but it worked without being very much in the way.

But in January of this year, we replaced our original couch, as well as bought a companion couch. That companion couch went right along the kitchen/living room division so that the two rooms are now more separate from each other. But that left absolutely nowhere for our Christmas tree. We considered using a teeny tiny one, but I just couldn't do it. I need a real Christmas tree! So we found a place for it . . . now we just have to maneuver around it every time we need to get anywhere . . . bedroom, bathroom, or living room. Small price to pay, right? ;)

I made this ornament using things from our wedding--our invitation is inside,
and both the purple ribbon and the name ribbon were used for different things at our reception.

The ornament we bought for our first Christmas together :)

We adopted but changed one of Russ's family traditions . . . we have a box of candy canes
and we get to hang them on the tree whenever we either do something nice, or someone
does something nice for us. I guess they're like good deed candy canes or something :)

So here's hoping that next year, we might just be in a house that can fit all my craftiness and our Christmas tree, too :)

What are your favorite Christmas decorations to put up? :)