Our sweet and simple Christmas decorations

We moved into our house 3 days before Christmas last year.  Needless to say, we did not decorate!  I was excited this year to see the house in festive bloom!  Because we did not have a lot of extra money, I made no new purchases (except for some dollar store goodies!).  I have a good idea of a few things I might look for after Christmas. 

Front door

Our good friends have a tree farm, so we got to go pick ours out and cut it down. 

Because we do not have a mantle we hung garland from these vents with ornament hooks.  It was perfect to hang the stockings.

I got these stockings at World Market before we had the boys!  I bought 2 extra- for future use.  This is our first year to have all 4 up.

Beethoven gets a hat every year.  :-)

In the dining room, I was trying to make an ornament wreath (SO not as easy as it looked here).  What I ended up with was a cluster-type thing.  I kind of like it.

Just some knick knacks on the hutch.  This might get some after-Christmas love.

I do like these jingle bells from the Dollar Store!

We are doing a Jesse tree for the first time. We started late, but I have really enjoyed the devotions. Bear likes the ornament hanging part. :-)

Close-up of our pretty nativity set.  We bought this in Ecuador on a mission trip.

Some gingerbread in the kitchen!

We tried to keep things simple.  I have so many ideas about what to do all over the house, but I do not want that to get in the way of why we celebrate. It will be fun to add a little here and there, though.  It's hard to have a healthy balance between the spiritual and physical sometimes, but we are trying!

I do really enjoy seeing how these super creative people decorate!