The Start of the Christmas Decorating

Well, we got the tree up last night.  And it wasn't horrible for once! (I exaggerate only slightly.) 

The last few years, it's been a total ordeal to get the tree in the house and in the stand fairly straight. And then there have been annoying, unanticipated light issues.  (I was lucky to find two strands of white lights two weeks before Christmas last year when we discovered the lights we'd previously been using were kaput.)

And while the decorated trees have ultimately been gorgeous, the process leading up?  Not so much...

But not this year...thank goodness. It was fun and done in one evening and we even listened to Celtic Christmas music.

I still need to get candy canes to hang on the tree, trim the top so the star isn't lop-sided, and take close-ups of some of my favorite ornaments, but our Fraser Fir is looking pretty good!

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The other main decorating accomplished so far revolves around my latest obsession: glitter houses.

Robin at Happy at Home has a fabulous collection of glitter houses she's made herself, which I saw last year at Christmastime and immediately wanted.  Look at all this wonderful inspiration!

via Happy at Home

On her site, she also has this tutorial and this tutorial. Between the two of these, all the bases are covered for making your own glitter houses.  Highly recommend them!

Now, I haven't actually constructed any houses...yet...but instead started off with the chipboard/paper mache houses available at Hobby Lobby to get my glitter house village going.

Here's a shot of the burgeoning collection in the living room.  (The house second from the left was a gift from my mom.)  I'll be making this house next from LittleGlitterHouses.com to fill in the bare spot on the far right. 

The last house is my favorite with its sweet vintage color scheme.  The sparkle is just perfection. The insides of the windows of all the houses I made are lined with crinkled wax paper (to give the feel of frosted glass) and have battery-operated tea lights inside so they can glow at night. 

Making glitter houses is addictive and now I'm trying to figure out the color scheme for the next one.  Anybody have any ideas?  I have an 18-pack of Martha Stewart glitter so there are plenty of color choices!

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Since there is no shortage of mason jars in this household, I also a jumped on the Anthro snow globe knock-off wagon. They are very simple to make and are cute as pie.  Here's just one of several I made last weekend.

And after much struggle, I managed to get a little bottle brush tree into a glass ornament.  It's cute but gawd was it a pain!  I won't share a photo of the other one I did--that poor little tree looks like it has scoliosis after all the unceremonious jamming it took to get it in there. And don't even get me started on the process of finally getting it to stand up straight! 

Is there any technique to these kinds of ornaments or am I just clueless about how to assemble them with ease? Because I couldn't find a single tutorial anywhere on Pinterest or in blog land. 

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I still need to go clip some cedar branches and red berries from outside to add more natural elements to the house. And for some artificial elements, I'm dying to get the spray snow/frost to spray on some of the windows.

Hey, it's slow going around here but the decorating will get done eventually.  :)

Happy Decorating,
Erin