our book tree + Christmas cheer!

our book tree! 

now with presents... all we need is Christmas morning

Merry Christmas, dear readers!  I've been wanting to share our holiday decor with you for awhile, but... well, until a few days ago we didn't have a tree at all, so that would have been a bit of a bust.  The other afternoon, though, I had an extra hour and decided to surprise Elliott when he came home with another book tree.  We made our first one last year and loved it, as there is no better tree for budget-conscious nerds like us.  (It also completely eliminates the "are we fake tree people or real tree people??" debate.)  This year our tree is elevated out of the reach of little hands on my craft table, and it has made that dark corner of the living room come alive.

(By the way, I scored the cute vintage mitten wrapping paper and the retro stripe paper from IKEA earlier this week.  So pretty!)

And, of course, there are the other holiday decorations for our home, like garlands on the bannisters and bows on the door (although I loved our red ones last year even more than these glittery gold bows).  I also love displaying my grandmother's gift to us: a tiny little tree from Switzerland with its precious wooden ornaments.

I will tell you that I had another tree first.  It was quite beautiful and creative, and I was pleased today when Martha Stewart's Organizing Tip of the Day email had the same idea.  I took two medium-sized tree branches, spray-painted them gold, and put them in a glass vase.  I then carefully hung all our beautiful handmade ornaments (again, thank you, Grammie, for your gift of a handmade ornament every year of my life!) on the branches as well as two beautiful glass ball ornaments that Elliott and I had purchased soon after we got married.

Unfortunately it was a little top heavy, I guess.  It fell over.  The casualty?  One of those newlywed glass ornaments smashed into a million pieces!  I dismantled the tree and took the branches out to the trash heap.  Sorry, honey, I have a long way to go before I'm Martha!