Merry Christmas 2012!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours! 

Christmas Vacation

I've never really wanted a destination Christmas. Unless it was my family's tradition to go to the beach or to a ski lodge or somewhere else, I don't think I would like it. To me, going home and being home at Christmastime is something I look forward to all year long.

Aaron and I were talking about traveling over Christmas, and he asked if I was sad to be leaving our own home, which we've relaxed in and enjoyed decorating so much for the season. If we were traveling somewhere that didn't have as much meaning, I might be, but since we are going to our childhood homes, I don't feel like I will be missing much at all.

I have been thinking about if this will change next year, when we have our own baby. Some of my best memories are when my family did not travel, and we stayed at our own home and did Christmas our own way. I certainly want my family to have our own Christmas traditions, but, right now, I don't not want to be with our extended family over the holidays. Yes, the drives are long and it's tough to juggle two family Christmases with only the two of us, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Especially because it's one of the only times each year we get to see our family.

For now, we'll enjoy our last Christmas without baby and relish the time and freedom we have to make this trip.

Christmas Tour of Home 2011

Welcome to our home at Christmastime! Since we live in a small apartment, there's not too much room. I love this season, though, and some of my favorite memories are how my mom decorated our house growing up, so I have found a few little niches to put the Christmas things that I love.










We bought a taller Frasier Fir this year than we did in 2010. We didn't realize it until we brought it home and it looked huge in our tiny living room. We call it our Whoville tree because it leans a little bit to the right, has a pretty big hole in the bottom, and the star won't stand up straight. I love it anyway.



We don't have a theme for our tree. It is a collection of ornaments from our childhoods, our travels and our new family traditions. Growing up, I got ornaments each year from my grandparents, and I also got a new Chrismon on Christmas Eve service at our church. Aaron got a Precious Moments ornament each Christmas. Both are so much fun to take out each year; we love telling the stories associated with each of our old ornaments.

Some of our ornaments are new; we have a few Husker ornaments, of course, from our time at UNL, and we also got several ornaments from our wedding two Decembers ago. Though I'm not a blonde, one of my favorites is the one pictured below. Last Christmas, they fell down and the bride literally broke her crown. You can see in the picture the sharp ridge where the gold crown used to sit.

One of my favorite parts of our Christmas tree is getting our new ornaments. Each year, we pick an ornament symbolic of the year to add to our tree. In 2010, we picked an alligator to represent our move to Florida. This year, we picked a nest to symbolize our growing family. I'm sure next year we'll get a few "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments!

 

I love our green stockings. I don't know if we'll use the same ones on our mantel next year, because we didn't make any more and we'll need another stocking next year, but I know we'll find a place for them in the future. They are just so fun and bright.

 

I feel like living in a warmer climate has changed my Christmas decorating style. I don't use a lot of dark reds or greens or have much of anything in that color. For instance, my Christmas village:















I love my mom's vintage Putz houses, and though none of these are originals, I think they are so fun and quirky. This will be a collection I hope to grow over time.

I'll end this little tour with my favorite Christmas possession. When I was a little girl, my parents bought me this tin nativity. Each Christmas season, I would set the nativity up in a prominent place in my room and proudly display it. I took it to college and did the same thing at Christmastime, and now, the nativity is with me in Tallahassee. When I was younger, I wished for shepherds to go with the set, and I always had difficulty using the metal peg in the back to stand up the tin people. They fell down daily, and I would always painstakingly arrange them again, hoping they'd stay upright. I would beg my mom to not put away the nativity with the rest of the Christmas decorations, but to no avail. They would get packed away for another 11 months, only to be opened with joy again the following year.



Perhaps that is why decorating my home at Christmas means so much to me. It's certainly not necessary to have a tree or ornaments or anything, but once a year, to celebrate one of the most joyous seasons of the year, I want to open the boxes that have been packed away and experience a renewed sense of joy in the season. They are just things, but to me, they are indicators of the joy of Christmas, Christ himself, and the memories of spending time with those we love and cherish.

Crafternoon: Painted Ornaments

I blogged about wanting to paint my own ornaments based on a DIY I pinned. The colors were irresistable, so I went to Michael's to get supplies. The clear ornaments were half off, so I scored a ton for less than $10. I bought large and medium-sized ornaments.



 The paint was on sale for $.79. I wasn't sure which type would work best, so I bought enamel acrylic, regular acrylic and gloss acrylic. The enamel acrylic was the thickest, requiring the most paint per ornament in order to spread, but it also provided the best coverage. The plain and gloss paints were thin, which helped because they were easier to spread through the ornament, but they also took longer to dry and some turned out streaky if I didn't work quickly and let them dry completely.



This project is so easy. Take the ornament cap off and squeeze a generous amount of paint into the ornament.





Then, I wrapped my thumb with a paper towel to cover the hole and shook, shook, shook until the paint covered the entire ornament.



Like I said earlier, it took a lot of shaking, especially for the enamel painted ornaments. A good forearm workout.



Then, turn the ornament upside down and let it dry. Excess paint will drip out of the cap. I let most of mine dry overnight, but for the last batch, I was impatient and only set them to dry for an hour or so. Put the cap hook back on the ornaments, and, voila, the ornaments are good to go.

Verdict: super easy and they turned out well. A+.

Comfy Christmas evenings

Christmas Evening by emilynix on polyvore.com

Last night was just one of those nights when, after dinner and cleaning the kitchen, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch Christmas movies. We watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and I fell asleep right after it was done (at around 7:45)! Twinkling lights, a warm home, a comfy blanket and a sweet husband is pretty much the perfect combination for relaxation after a stressful day. I'm new to polyvore, but I tried to put together a little inspiration board of things that make me happy during this season.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas is one of our favorite movies (of all time, not just Christmas), and we love watching A Charlie Brown Christmas; the fun JOY mugs are perfect for hot chocolate, and what goes better with hot chocolate than Christmas cookies?!The West Elm blanket is absolutely the most comfortable thing ever. For the record, my iPhone is included in this because I feel like a new person now that I can take pictures and not have a five-second delay. And one of my favorite Monday night activities is reading the post-of-the-week on the BabyCenter app to see how Baby Guy is growing.

Obviously, it's not the things that make this season the best time of the year, but I am thankful for the comfort they offer. Meanwhile, we're getting down to business about baby tonight by starting our first of four childbirth classes. I am eager to see what they will be like and am ready to soak up all of the information we'll be offered. I am still waiting back to hear about test results, so please keep praying for good results.

Hope your Tuesday is merry and bright! 

seredipity

My mother swears she didn't plan this.

Christmas Tour of Home

It's a little late for this, but the weeks leading up to Christmas vacation were so busy that I didn't get my act together soon enough to post pictures of our house decorated in time for Christmas. Well, two days back in town and I seem to have caught the plague all of the Nixes had last week, so I've been quarantined to the couch. Even though Christmas came and went, I'd still like to post about what I did to make our apartment festive in 2010.

The stockings were a gift from my mom. Aaron and I didn't have any stockings, so when we went to Texas for Thanksgiving, she made some for us. I love the green! 

My beloved nativity. Mom and Daddy gave me this when I was a little girl, and taking it out each year brings back so many treasured memories.

This year I started collecting a cardboard Christmas village.  I didn't do a great job displaying them, but at least I have a start! There's something so whimsical about the paper villages, and I look forward to adding to it for many years to come.

The ornament is from our honeymoon. We loved the bright red gondolas in Vail, which is where we spent our first Christmas.

It's a tradition in my family to get an ornament for each pet, so this year I found Olive and Toby an ornament. It was difficult to find a black cat ornament, but how serendipitous that the single ornament I found was wearing a sweater. Poor Olive Suh.

So, that's what the apartment looked like this Christmas. I loved having my own home to decorate! We'll spend this weekend, Epiphany, taking down all of the decorations and storing them for next year.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. 

We have seen his glory, 

the glory of the one and only Son, 

who came from the Father, 

full of grace and truth. 

John 1:14

The Nativity of our Lord, Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!

In the joy of the newborn King,

Emily and Aaron

Homes for the Holidays

I can't wait to go home for Christmas.

And by home, I mean my parents' house in Texas.

But I'm a little apprehensive to be leaving home this Christmas.

And by home, I mean our first home, our home in Tallahassee, the place Aaron and I have made our own, apart from our families.

It's a weird feeling. I never expected that I would grow up, get married and feel like my childhood home was no longer my home. I still feel like that is home, and I don't think there's any place I'd rather be on Christmas eve.

But then we got married a year ago, and we moved to this apartment in February, and I've spent the last ten months making this place our home. It must have worked, because I get a little sad to think we are leaving for the holidays. I think about how much fun I had decorating and incorporating old and well-loved things passed on to me by my grandmothers and my aunts and my mom into our Christmas house, and how I love the few things I purchased on my own to begin my own collections that I may one day, God willing, pass down to my daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. I think about our Christmas tree sitting alone, and the garland drying out, and the dark house on Christmas eve. And I get sad about it.

And then I think about why I am ambivalent about where to call home this holiday season.

Because I have been blessed with so much.

And it's not in one place in Florida, Texas or Nebraska.

And I have to remember that home is carried in my heart wherever I go.

Christmas Tree of Hearts by thomaswilsonii via flickr

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program...

Merry Christmas from St. Nix and his elves!