Christmas-ifying the house.

The family and I just got back from a trip to visit the families and the van engine was not even cooled from the trip before I started throwing all the harvesty stuff into a bin to make way for CHRISTMAS!  Ten hours in the car, laundry to put away, kids to get in bed...but I managed to get the Harvesty stuff put away in the midst of doing other things and left a clean slate for Monday Morning to get the house all Christmas Cozy.  I'm not done yet, but here is my start.

I sewed some chocolate colored Christmas fabric onto my red gingham Christmas curtains (a ralph lauren gingham sheet I found at the thrift store).  I put some blackout fabric behind them (thumbtacked) because honestly lining curtains I will use for a month at a time is really not appealing to me.  I added some other Charlie Brown/Peanuts stuff.  As you will come to learn, this family is kind of into that.  It all started with my oldest thinking we were related to Charlie Brown...ya know, with our last name being Brown.  We started buying the movies and collecting things we saw that were Peanuts related with the help of my equally Peanuts obsessed sister.  We completely enable each other on that addiction.  The kids love it.

And I love a skinny tree but this thing has got to be fluffed more.  Half of our big light strand was burned out so I am going to go to the store some time this week and get some serious illumination for this puppy.  See that Christmas Skirt?  I made that last year and I am already over it.  Oh well, it will get covered in boxes soon enough.

And I hung the stockings with care.  The kids stockings are made with their footprints or handprints as antlers.  Ours are Peanuts stockings from (you guessed it) my sister.  The figures on the mantle all play a song (which is why they are on the mantle).  My favorite is the Shepherd Linus because he talks about the true meaning of Christmas.

And I made this pillow today with Wal-Mart fabric.  Yes, I am gonna admit that.  Hopefully nobody will revoke my blog for that admission, but it was cute and it was cheap.  I think I made the right decision because I did not get high blood pressure when my son smeared all this lipstick on it.  Christmas spirit was kept in check thanks to cheapo fabric.

And I'm considering stealing a few train tracks from Train World to make a track around my tree.  That's probably asking for trouble though.