The Magic of Christmas Decorations (by Bethany)

We like to put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. Along with Christmas music, decorations help bring the magic of Christmas immediately, and make it last all month long! I love our Christmas stuff, but we have never spent Christmas Eve or Christmas morning in our own home. We always go to one of our parents' houses. None of our Christmas decorations are fancy or expensive, but they all have memories or meaning behind them, which I think is what really matters. So, in honor of our first Christmas on our own, here's a tour of Christmas in our home:

Sarah made us an awesome mix last Christmas of songs from all the old Christmas records we used to listen to as kids - so fun and nostalgic! We also listen to a lot of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and of course N*Sync!

Our Christmas books count as decorations, since they usually "decorate" our living room floor!

Christmas cards from family and friends, along with our very full December calendar.

We love our Christmas cocoa cups! Perfect for cold snowy mornings!

No outside outlets = indoor icicle lights!

Reminder of our three years in New Mexico for grad school.

Jingle bells on the bathroom door are actually useful when potty training:) 

And Charlie can't get enough of this jingle bell wreath every time we leave the house:)

The obligatory Christmas decoration for anyone with the last (or maiden) name of Flake. My parents have a whole wall of this kind of stuff!

Drawings the kids made just yesterday. 

 We used to always cut our own mistletoe by the Rio Grande in New Mexico, but now we just have the picture to show for it:)

 Stockings over the (construction paper) fire. Paul's mom made his - a bit more ambitious than the ones I made!

 Craft project we did at Sarah's over Thanksgiving.

 My parents are getting rid of stuff, preparing to go on a mission to Panama in January, so my mom gave me this. It's nothing fancy, and I don't know the story behind it, but you can never have too many nativities.

Our nativity that Paul brought back from his mission to the Philippines is on loan. It's being displayed at the Washington DC Temple Visitors Center for the whole month - we had to brave the cold weather to go see it!

Alice loves playing with nativities:)

 This used to be our kids' favorite musical snow globe... It's no longer a snow globe.

 We made these for Relief Society a few years ago. Mine got ruined, so a friend gave me hers:) I love them!

 Laminated nativity for the kids to play with. We lost the piece with the animals on it. I think the replacement piece fits:)

 Kids love snow globes!

 We love this book - it's got animotion!

 My mom made this. It is my very favorite decoration. You should see all the quilting detail! 

 Christmas projects from the kids.

 The dollar store is a gold mine. You couldn't make these for a dollar!

 I made this wall hanging using fabric from my mother-in-law when I was in a weekly sewing group. It's pretty poorly made, but I made matching ones for my mom and mother-in-law, so it stays!

 Charlie Brown Christmas tree from some random white elephant gift exchange - perfect for Charlie's room!

 The girls' room gets the tiny tree we used as our Christmas tree for the first few years of our marriage.

Our "Jesus stocking". We used to write our gifts to Jesus on a slip of paper, put them in the stocking, and read them the next year to see if we'd done them. Well, we hadn't. So this year, we pinned our gifts to Jesus on the outside of the stocking for us to work on all month!

Last, but not least, is our little 6-foot $5 tree. The ornaments tell a story of our life together as a couple and as a family.

Christmas decorations truly are magical!