Christmas Tour of Homes

A friendly little snowman waits by our front door to welcome you into our home, all decorated for the holiday season!

Won't you come in and have some fresh, hot coffee? We have some oh-so-good Eggnog creamer. Grab some white chocolate dipped pretzels too! My lil' princess's job is to sprinkle the pretzels as soon as I dip them in the white chocolate! The lil' prince holds the job of 'quality control' and tastes them for us to make sure we did a good job! ;-)

Here is our staircase all aglow! Along with our candy cane tree in the foyer, the 'formal' tree in the dining room, and our memory tree in our family room. (Notice that this year they are all decorated only about two-thirds the way down...we have a toddler this year!)

Below is a close up of under our tree in the family room...the children's nativity along with some favoriate ornaments...ornaments the children can play with, an ornament of Santa kneeling beside the Baby Jesus - I love this one because I bought it with a book about St. Nicholas and it weaves together nicely Santa Claus and Jesus, the real reason we celebrate Christmas! Oh and we can't forget mommy's ornament...a cup of Starbuck's Coffee of course ;-)

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

A close up on our wreath on the mantle:

The Princess' tree in her room and the Prince's tree in his room:

And finally, our 'countdown to Christmas'. This year I filled this cute little metal stocking with 25 candy canes and we have been keeping track of the days until Christmas every night by taking out one of the candy canes and hanging it on our tree in the foyer, then we change the number on the chalkboard. The little Princess loves this and the little Prince does too, but for other reasons...he was VERY quiet one day and I caught him eating one of the candy canes off the foyer tree wrapper and all!!!! So since then, I found some fake candy canes to hang on the tree but we put the real ones in back and so far he just thinks they are all fake now ;-)

As you leave our home, let me impart a favorite quote by Linus (straight from Luke 2:8-14 King James Version) in answer to Charlie Brown's question of the true meaning of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas:

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men."

Jesus is the reason that our family celebrates CHRISTmas!
Our family wishes you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!!!

Now head on over to BooMama's to tour some other great homes!