Christmas just got real

For the first time ever, I have a real Christmas tree in my house!  And by "real", I mean a tree that was cut down from its natural habitat to be dressed up in my living room for my enjoyment.  Take THAT, nature.

There she is!  How lovely.  This year, due to a curious toddler, we did non-breakable decorations and things out of reach.  The tree has simple white lights on it and we decorated by making an old school paper chain.  I had a TON of red cardstock left over from our handmade fake wedding invitations, so I cut them into strips and linked them around each other using a stapler and a sometimes-helpful toddler.

 

Please ignore that baby weight.  Still working on it.  Anyway, I added a dollar-store star, and any Christmas cards that come in the mail, and there you have it!  But where to put stockings?  I wanted to hang some, but we don't have a better place to put them, so I took some twine and made a loop on each end. The loop went around the ends of the curtain rod.  Then, I put on a stocking, tied a small knot around the loop on the stocking so it would stay in one place on the twine, and repeated for all of the stockings.  I love how it looks, and the twice is not very visible.  And, if you DO notice it, it looks nice and rustic, like the rest of the tree.

Stockings on twine

Oh yeah, I had a garland from last year with some red ball ornaments thrown in it, so that got attached to the curtain rod as well.  I'm super pleased with how this all came out.  The rest of my house might be a mess, but this small picture looks very festive and makes me smile.  Sometimes simpler really is better.  I'm glad I tried something different - did you do something new this year?