simple christmas decorating

My Christmas decorating is minimal this year. I'm just not feeling the whole deck the halls thing. Could be part of my whole "less is more" attitude this year. Brian brought up the boxes of Christmas decorations from the basement and I started digging through everything. As I started placing Santas and snowmen and candles and other assorted Christmas tchotchkes around the house, I found that I'd be walking around with a decorative item in my hand wondering where to put it...or I'd make an arrangement on a shelf or tabletop and think, "Nah, doesn't look right". And then I realized how much time I was spending trying to decide where to put Christmas decorations - and that's not how I wanted to be spending my time. As Sweet Brown says, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

(I'll let Crate and Barrel take over the decorating duties)

The only new Christmas decor item I bought this year was a real boxwood wreath for the front door. Again, being in a more minimal mind-frame, I don't want any new Christmas stuff coming into this house. There is absolutely nothing we need and more stuff only ends up being one more thing to take up storage room. Doesn't make any sense when you're working on decluttering all the accumulated stuff in storage as it is! Anyway, I had always admired boxwood wreaths but yet never bought one. Silly, when they're only $10 (at Trader Joes). I hung the wreath on the front door and then started laughing. It was only then that I remembered our front door was stripped of its stain this fall and never repainted before the cold weather set in. So I certainly don't want to draw attention to our "lovely" front door with an elaborate wreath! Another thing I realized when I hung up the wreath, was that it didn't have any pine cones on it. It was supposed to. I guess they fell off in the display box at the store and I never noticed. Oh well - I got my boxwood wreath this year. ;-)

On to the decorating. Most of it happened in the living room and kitchen. I use the mirror on the living room wall to tape up the Christmas cards that we receive. Umm...we've only received two cards so far this year. I took this photo before I hung up the second card. The two small owl cards are just extra ones I had that I thought were cute. I know it's still early - that people send out cards at the last minute, but still...I don't think too many people mail out cards anymore. I remember the days when we received so many cards, they'd be taped up all over the back of our front door and onto the walls.

Kitties are always part of my decor...

though Clementine looks like she is purposely part of the vignette on the buffet.

The little tree is our official Christmas tree. We don't put up a big one anymore. No desire and too much trouble. I displayed some of the boy's ornaments on this little tree. I still buy a Christmas ornament for Tim every year. I know the window still needs something more...greenery or a garland of some sort around the window, but I "played" with what I had and nothing looked right. Martha Stewart is not coming to my house, so it's all good.

Moving into the kitchen...have to keep it simple on the kitchen table because of the cats. Anything elaborate, and they're up there nosing around, having to check things out. Notice my two new white chairs? And the cream-colored rug? I found the rug at Walmart, of all places. Was inexpensive, seems durable (which is a must in a well-used kitchen), and made in the USA. I'd been looking for new kitchen chairs for a long time and finally ordered the white ones from Overstock. We only ordered two to see if we liked the quality and how they looked in the kitchen. We're happy with them, so we'll order two more. The red chairs are just cheap IKEA chairs that I found at Goodwill this past year.

A peek into the china cabinet...keeping it simple.

Top of the fridge. I love my Debbie Mumm snowman print plates that I got at Target oh, about 15 years ago.

This is it in the main bath - a silver angel on the top shelf and some baubles on the bottom shelf.

The table at the end of the hall got a gold tree to match the gold mirrors on the wall and some vintage Christmas cards pinned to the tree. Easy and done!

Did you go all out with Christmas decorating this year, or were you more of a minimalist like me?

Linking up to Cozy Little House's Christmas Open House Link Party.