Welcome back, friends! I just want to start off by saying that I am blown away with the love and support I have received from you all after launching my blog last week! I am truly grateful for all of you! SO, thank you, THANK YOU! To be honest, it was pretty scary to “Go for it”, but now that I did…boy am I SO happy I didn’t wait any longer! You guys are the BEST!
Last week I shared HERE how I decorated the Cottage for Christmas this year and today I want to share how I decorated the loft! I knew I wanted to decorate it with all our vintage, handmade, and family heirlooms type things! One of our favorite family treasures is this vintage Lionel Train that was my father-in-laws as a boy! He, of course, passed it to my husband, who then passed it to my son when he was about 6 years old. It is absolutely huge!
Many years we were unable to even get it out and set it up at Christmas because we didn’t have a room big enough. A few years we had much larger homes and those years we always made sure to set it up and get it running during Christmas break! I’m not sure who loves it more, my husband who is an Engineer or my son who wants to be an Engineer/Inventor someday!!! This year, for the first time in a long while, we set it up! I can’t wait to see my fathers-in-law’s face when he sees it run again!
When we got married we each had our childhood stockings, but after we added a couple kiddos to the family, I decided to make us each a new stocking! We’ve had these SO long, It is probably time to replace them! They are starting to show their wear, but that’s okay. It makes it more special to keep them just because it’s a tradition. They are burlap stockings lined with linen. I had fun making each one different! At the time, I didn’t even consider just buying them, probably because my mom made ours when we were kids! It’s funny how we pick up things like that without even realizing it!
This is the first time we have ever had more than one Christmas tree, and we have always had one real tree. My husband worked his first job trimming Christmas trees at his great uncle’s tree farm and he has LOVED fresh Christmas trees ever since! We were married while in college and he worked the whole Christmas season, selling Christmas trees a couple years to bring in extra money for the holidays…but also because he loved it so much! There really is something so magical about helping a family pick out their tree and loading it onto their car! So when he came home one day with two artificial trees, I was shocked! He kindly told me that we could have more than one tree and that he still wanted to have a fresh tree as usual!!
I love using chalkboards year round! I love how I can just change up the art depending on the season! I definitely don’t draw as well as I use to since hurting my hand building our house, but I still LOVE to sketch and play around with the chalkboard art all the time!
A while back I was at an antique shop, scouring their books (as per usual) and found the coolest book It was a collection of 80 Currier and Ives prints!! It was published in the mid 19 century and it’s fairly large! I’ve had it out and we’ve been enjoying looking through and reading about the prints. So many of them are winter or Christmas themed!
We have collected many Christmas ornaments that seem totally random, but almost every single one has a special memory attached to it! It takes the kids hours to decorate the tree because they stop to tell the story of almost every ornament! We hear a lot of “HEY, I remember when you (or I) got that ornament, it was for …” (fill in the blank)!!!
The one thing that is new this year is the tree box! Now that we had more than one tree, I didn’t have enough tree skirts. After building our kids loft/bunk bed project (Read about that HERE) I had lots of small scraps of wood leftover. I really wanted a box instead of a tree skirt, but I didn’t want it to look like every other one out there! So, one afternoon I got out the saw and nail gun and went to work! I made the box from leftover plywood and then added the thin shiplap planks using the brad nailer! After one quick coat of chalk paint in the color shiplap, it was all done! I love how it turned out and it only took me about 2 hours to make and it was FREE! Can’t beat that!!
Now that we are ONE week away from Christmas, I can hardly wait! WOW, that snuck up on us fast! I’d love to hear what holiday traditions you love or what family heirlooms you always love to bring out that for Christmas! For me, there is something so incredibly heartwarming about all the traditions and family time! I love all the hustle and bustle of it all, but even more than that I love how we all come together to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior! What a wonderful time of year!
SO, cheers to only one week until Christmas! Cheers to playing board games in our PJs sipping hot chocolate! Cheers to candlelight services and Christmas carols! Cheers to sledding all afternoon and playing so hard in the snow that we crash and fall asleep 15 min into our favorite Christmas movie! As I prepare for the week ahead, I want to really be intentional about keeping my heart focused on the first Christmas.
Wishing you a very Merry “Vintage” Christmas!
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