It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like...

So we decided not to get a Christmas tree this year.  We've both been swamped with work and it suddenly feels awfully late in the season to be putting one up.  But that doesn't mean I didn't pull out the Christmas decorations!  Most of them are from thrift stores and IKEA, but that means that I've been able to find some more unusual things.

I love, love, love eating supper by candlelight in the winter.  Three red IKEA candlesticks, fifty cents each!  Full-length poinsettia tablecloth and napkins only a few dollars at an after-Christmas sale.

Here they are in the daylight, with holly from our yard.

Just because we don't have a tree doesn't mean that we don't have our Christmas lights up!  I ran lights around the perimeter of our back living room and bedroom.  They're on every night!

I love to hang things.  I strung red velvet bows and pine cone ornaments (both thrifted!) on twine in several areas of the house.

These tin snowflakes and doves block us every time we make a smoothie...but I don't care!

Soft wool stockings...

...including the only real memento I have left from my childhood (besides my copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales).
 

If it had a nail, it got a stocking.

I found these little embroidered pillows at a thrift store years ago.  I love them!

Gold snowflakes from IKEA are scattered around on the glass of our kitchen cabinets...

...and Todd scored these gigantic cardboard snowflakes when Radio Shack closed a year or so ago.

I'm really into bows at Christmastime.

I have several vintage Christmas cards (from, you guessed it, some flea market) that I put up around the house.

Major Goodwill score - this sturdy wooden Advent calendar.

As you can probably tell, I've got holly all over the house.  Around the bases of candle sticks, on the Advent calendar, tucked into stockings, tucked into vases...

...on our dressers...

...and yes, that's another bow. 

Craft-wise, I haven't had a spare second for anything.  But I've really been in the mood to cross-stitch.  I bought two designs - one a badger family hanging up their stockings, and another a full-size Christmas stocking that you embroider various pine trees onto - but I didn't have enough cross-stitch fabric to make either one.  I did, however, have enough to make this simple little design with my initial on it:

I embroidered it and then made it into a pincushion.

It was the perfect project for tired evenings before bed.  Now I'm knitting a pair of "wristlets" - or, basically, fingerless gloves with no thumb hole.  My hands are ALWAYS cold, but I need my fingers and thumb free for work.  Also, my hands are really thin, so normal-size fingerless gloves are too big.  I'm making a tiny pair (only 58 stitches around on size 1 needles) using two rows each of random colors.   I want to be able to slide them forward when I type but back below my thumb when I'm packing orders.  I think they'll be perfect. 

Have a great week!