Christmas Inspo + DIY Glittered Ornaments (External!)

HAPPY DECEMBER!

The Christmas season is my very favorite time of year, and it is upon us again!
Every year my husband and I have a party in November (like... 3 weeks ago, haha!) to usher in the season and celebrate "The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year"!

I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit today about Christmas and our trees. We LOVE decorations and have five trees in our house! Two main, one mid sized and two miniatures.

I like to change up the two main trees annually to make Christmas feel fresh each year and to keep them from becoming dated. But since I'm super frugal (read: cheap), there is a system to it!

And here it is! Tub organization.
This is probably the least glamorous blog picture in recent history, but this is how we change up the trees annually.
After Christmas, I cruise the sales when they're crazy cheap- 70% off at least. I look for ornaments in ANY COLOR we like. Any color. Especially bulbs. I think you can get like 25 bulbs at Target after Christmas for around $3, so it's super affordable. Then the ornaments/bulbs come home and are sorted by color into these tubs! After that, I have an entire year to decide how I want to do our trees. Our main trees are white and green so that we have more combination possibilities. This year we did our green tree with white and silver decorations and our white tree with a champagne/gold and blush pink decor.
I didn't have enough blush colored ornaments and could not find the color I wanted after several trips to different stores, so I had to create my own bulbs.
I wanted to go glittered, but all tutorials online were for the INTERNALLY glittered ornaments, and I wanted mine to be externally glittered.

So basically I just experimented and made my own using this glue + some thick glitter from Hobby Lobby, both of which I already had on hand.

I used some extra gold bulbs that were a little too dark and not champagne enough and just coated them with the glue.

After that, I shook the glitter on and placed them into egg cartons and mason jars to dry for 12-24 hours. It isn't a bad idea to do half of the ornament at a time so that you don't smudge the glitter and glue with your hands or the drying crates. Once they're dry, you can flip and do the other side.
You could also just do dots of glue for a polka dot look or even stripes :)

So far they're holding up really well! I'm going to spray them with some clear glaze spray paint when the tree comes down and then store them for the year. I'll let you know how they hold up!

One last pink tree look! I often use floral stems as tree toppers, especially on the white tree which tends to be super girly. The one I've been using for a long time was too bright and too dark for this new scheme. My mom had given me a grab bag of floral stems last year and these were included and PERFECT for the lighter tree. This is about 9 stems worth. I cut them all away from the stem and used floral wire to attach them in bunches and then secured bunches to the tree with wire in groups of three. The flowers go all the way around the top of the tree.

Here's a little look at our other main tree. To be honest, I did this same configuration last year, too. I really liked it and wanted another year before trying something new!

If you're wondering what we do with sentimental ornaments, because I am SUCH a sucker for sentiment, they do go out each year too. We have a small tree that we call the "Grandparent tree" which is filled with ornaments from our deceased grandparents' trees. I can't imagine not putting them out each year. They're so special, and the holidays are when I miss my family the most. My grandpa LOVED Christmas in a way that I've never seen since. 

Here are a few of my favorites from the grandparent tree. The gold swan + pink ornament are from my grandma's tree and the little tea kettle is from John's grandmother's tree. Our grandmas actually died within three weeks of each other a few years ago. It's so nice to think of them and remember Christmas traditions at their homes each year when we put up ornaments from their trees.

What are you doing for your trees this year? Any great tips? Feel free to weigh in below, and as always, thanks for reading!

Traditions Part 4: A Christmas Party!

Today is potentially a super full day, so I'm reluctant to make anything just yet. Tomorrow will be a big day for crafting, though! Instead of creating something new today, I thought it would be fun to share another tradition. This one isn't from my childhood, it's one that John and I started when we began dating.

The very first Christmas party

John was a straight up bachelor. There was NO cooking or anything else of the domestic variety (except for incessant cleaning...never saw a cleaner toilet in my life). From time to time he would venture an attempt at Kraft Mac & Cheese or boxed spaghetti + a can of sauce, but generally he ate massive quantities of fast food. When our first Christmas together came along, we decided to ditch the bachelor-mode for a day and make a massive party at his little apartment (which was so dear and will always be missed!). We had so much fun at our personal Christmas party that we've had one every year since!

COOKIES!

Our Christmas party, which actually requires an entire day off from work in order to be acceptable and accommodate all of the festivities, includes a massive array of fun! This is the day that the tree goes up and the season officially begins for us. John loves the tree... the first thing he does when he gets up or comes home is to turn the lights on for the tree. It goes up for us asap, usually the weekend before Thanksgiving, and then stays up through January. Is that a long time? Yes. We just can't bring ourselves to take it down! Plus it just takes soooo much work, it needs to be there for a while. I'm not showing my tree in this blog yet because I'm going  to do an entire blog about it soon.

yum.

We always bake scads of cookies as well. As the list of allergies has increased, our cookie variation has decreased. In the glory days, we had several kinds of sugar cookies, lofthouse inspired creations, chocolate chip and so on. We also had different kinds of frosting (buttercream and icing), but now it's mostly sugar-based. For this year, we were able to find a pretty good GF sugar cookie mix. I'll blog it this Friday. The cookie decorating is fun because we don't take these cookies seriously. Generally, they're all gone within two days, so it doesn't matter how goofy or wild they look. And, believe me, the more frosting and sprinkles... the better. 

There are tons of other elements; Christmas movies: The Grinch, Frosty, Rudolph, Elf... all the goodies. Popcorn tubs! We go through several of those each season, from drug store versions to the gourmet, we love them all! We always make a delicious lunch and dinner, remember, this started off as a break from bachelor life for John! Christmas music kicks it off each year and plays the entire party, as long as we aren't watching a Christmas movie. We put up our little, tiny mistletoe as well as the rest of our decorations, too. Oh, and it always includes a little nonsense like reindeer ears (so hot, right?) and what not.

The Christmas party is a huge deal to us. We talk about it all year long! It's our favorite day together and our favorite tradition. Traditions are so important in life, they bring people together and give them something to look forward to. Maybe you already have a specific "Christmas party" with your little family or roommates or whoever, or maybe you'd like to start one! I promise, setting aside an entire day and turning it into an entire celebration makes the entire season, and the process of getting a home bedecked in tinsel, so much more fun. 

John decorating :)

So there you have it! Our favorite tradition. I used pictures from a few different years, and 3 different locations! I hope you have a fantastic day and as always, thanks for reading.