Visiting a Tree Farm and Our Christmas Tree

We live in the heart of Christmas tree production here in Clackamas County, Oregon. Our county grows more trees than any other county in Oregon, and Oregon grows the most trees in the US. So you can imagine that we are literally surrounded by beautiful tree farms all around our small town. I love it, the air smells of Christmas trees all through the surrounding rural area throughout Christmas tree cutting season. You can see helicopters lifting loads of Christmas trees from the fields to the shipping locations starting in November.

Here is a helicopter hard at work that we spotted on the way to church in mid November.

The past few years we have been busy with school events and purchased our tree from local farmers that sell right here in town, but this year we decided that it had been quite some time since we had cut down our own, so we took a short drive outside of town and found the perfect tree farm. The drive there was beautiful, acres and acres of tree farms that all looked so beautiful all along the way.

The farmers at the tree farm we chose were very friendly, I spotted stacks of fire wood at the entrance to the farm, something about stacks of firewood always intrigue me, I had to stop for a few pictures.

All the trees were lovely, just about any tree would have been great, finally we settled on one, and when we lifted the branches to start cutting it down we spotted a toad stool next to the trunk, which I thought was fun and perhaps a gift from a Christmas elf. ;)

My daughter loves trees and was right at home among all of the trees, she had fun exploring and balancing on all the tree stumps. :)

My son Joe decided that he would do the bulk of the tree cutting this year and got right to work with a hand saw.

After a bit of work he finally got our tree cut down. The farmer was so kind and brought a truck out to the field to drive it down to be bundled for us, we got the tree shaken out and all wrapped up and made our way home.

This year we decided to put the tree in our living room, so we got it all set up and ready to decorate.

It took us a few days to finish decorating because everyone was busy with various end of school term finals and choir practice. But finally we got it all decorated and it turned out really pretty.

This year we chose to put up a lot of our red ornaments, as well as some of my new faux fur ornaments, and forest themed ornaments, and some of our special family ornaments. One of my favorites this year is the lumberjack below, as well as my big faux fur letter M, and all the little red mushrooms I found at Ikea this year. My daughter found the pretty whale ornament below that is very cute, and we have a bunch of different fox ornaments this year as well. I love having the Christmas tree in the living room this year, we have the lights on every evening, and it is nice to see while we are watching Christmas shows together. :)

I made a fun video of our trip out to the tree farm as well as a closer look at our decorated tree.

This weekend I will be spending my time doing lots of baking and wrapping gifts. This December has flown by and Christmas is right around the corner. I am really looking forward to seeing all of my family on Christmas weekend. I hope everyone is having a nice Christmas season!

Thanks for stopping by! :)

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Christmas 2015 Home Tour

I love decorating for Christmas, it is something I look forward to every year. This year I decided to update a lot of my decor, and I was excited to plan out some new decor ideas, update some of my old favorites, and this year I even decided to decorate my bedroom. Here is a look at how I decorated for Christmas this year.

I have really been drawn to all things metallic this year, so I decided to do my entry and dining room in gold and mixed metallic colors. I love my little gold tree that I decorated with tiny metallic baubles and pinecones. I flanked the tree with two glittery deer and added some gold mercury glass votives. I decided to soften the room with a faux lamb skin from Ikea.

Here is the entry tree close up, I found a cute glittery cutout "Merry" ornament that made the perfect addition to the tree.

The garage and coat closet doors each got wreaths. I love the simple green felt wreath, I added a sparkly Noel ornament to tie it in with the metallic look of the room. I found a tiny gold wreath for the garage door, as well as a cute little sign for the door handle.

The entry opens up into the dining room, which is also done largely in metallic colors. I found these cute picture frames with gold antlers as well as a great marquee style glitter star and a deer bust. I added pictures of our fall picnic to the frames. On top of another bookcase is another marquee style lighted star, with a beautiful gold bottle brush tree and a wood cutout Peace decoration.

On my hutch bookcase I got out some of my favorite Christmas books and added some of my Santas, as well as a copper colored geometric shaped deer from Ikea, and a copper wolf from Target. I tucked in a few other favorite little decorations like my little pinecone elves around my books.

My dining room doubles as my library, so I have a lot of bookcases that I can decorate. On one set of bookcases I displayed one of my favorite finds this year, my gold deer head from Target, along with mercury glass hurricanes filled with led twinkle lights, a white and gold Santa, and a marquee Joy sign, with some pine garland to soften all the metallics.

I strung a metallic geometric garland across the window, and the last bookcase is decorated with a gold foiled deer, a glass lighted white and copper tree and two gold bottle brush trees. I added some mini pillows to my chairs as well as my plush polar bear.

On the table I have a cute sparkle themed wooden sign as well as my fox handled wooden tray with my gumdrop tree and some cute plates featuring animals dressed dapper style with gold accents, as well as a tall gold deer with a fur collar.

The side table is decorated with a burlap runner, gold deer, and other gold decor and floral picks, and features my two nativity scenes, my Celtic nativity and my olive wood nativity.

I love my Celtic nativity scene and look forward to having it out every Christmas, I love its simplified beauty.

On the way to the living room is our little hallway table, this year I decorated it with laser cut flat trees from The Container Store surrounding my little group of Santas, along with little red lantern ornaments.

The living room is decorated in woodland and lodge themed decor with red and green as well as wood and faux fur accents.

I found a new centerpiece for the mantle, a wonderful wood slice bear rimmed in rustic metal, I fell in love with this bear as soon as I saw it, both me and my hubby agreed it would be perfect. We kept with our tradition pine garland with red lights and red glass ornaments, and added some red candles in metal lined candle holders. To add height to the display I found these cute little wooden skis in Target's dollar spot, and they were perfect. I had originally purchase only one set of skis and they were on my TV stand as you can see above. Then I held it up to the wall and thought how nice it would look on the wall if I only had two. My Target's dollar spot gets picked over fast, so I wasn't very confident I would find any more of the skis since Black Friday had come and gone. However when I was out shopping with my mother, I popped over to Target and they had exactly two left, I was so happy to have found them.

I found some cute fur buckets to store extra blankets and pillows, I found a very comfy faux fur throw, as well as a plaid fur lined pillow. I want to have many cozy evenings enjoying Christmas movies along with hot cocoa, so I found a sturdy wooden tray that I thought would be perfect for serving hot cocoa and snacks. I love how cozy our living room turned out. I am currently in the process of decorating our tree which we cut down this past weekend, I will be doing a separate post of our tree when it is finished as well as some pretty pictures of the tree farm we visited.

I always like to add Christmas decor to the main bathroom. I wanted to do classic red decorations, I displayed one of my nutcrackers with some of my little silver deer, as well as a cute whimsical light up reindeer. I set out Christmas towels, and Christmas tissue in a cute metal basket. For the bathroom door, I found a cute red sled with vintage lettering.

This year I decided to decorate our bedroom, I have never really decorated our bedroom for Christmas, but now that the kids are young adults, and they often have company, I thought it would be nice to have a festive little retreat area for me and my hubby to enjoy some Christmas movies while the kids are busy with friends or finishing up college finals work. I love pastel Christmas decorations but they don't work very well with the rest of my house, so I thought it would be fun to do a pastel theme with a white tree for our bedroom. I found a faux fur white wreath for our door. I added a faux fur throw and some faux fur pillows to our bed along with my Snoopy. :)

On our TV cabinet I set up a pretty pastel Christmas scene. I used my old pink paperboard church, lots of pastel bottle brush trees, a pink mercury glass tree, and a wonderful collection of glass dessert themed pastel colored decorations that I found at Macy's this year and fell in love with.

I love doughnuts and two of the ornaments are beautiful glass doughnuts, as well as a gumball machine, a cupcake in a glass domed stand, a cute snowman ice cream cone and a 2015 candy and sweets themed ornament. I also added some inexpensive mini pastel baubles.

I found a pretty doll ornament wearing a cream colored winter outfit that I thought would be perfect for my display, I also added a glittery little deer and some of my old glittered mini wooden houses. I also found a pink metal candle holder from IKEA (I have the same one in red in my living room), and I knew the pink one would be perfect for my pastel Christmas display. I love how it turned out, and it makes me happy every time I see it from our bed.

So that is our Christmas home, I had so much fun updating my decor this year. I also made a video of our Christmas Home Tour for my Youtube channel which you can view below.

I hope you enjoyed checking out my Christmas home, I will leave you with a picture of my old friend and fur baby Xena, she is my 12 year old German Shepherd/Lab who is my constant companion, along with her "younger sister" my young lab Zoey who is far to busy to stop for a picture. Xena loves sitting by the fire every time it's on, and I'm glad I was able to snap a few pictures of her. Xena knows the drill every year and looks forward to Christmas decorating, she loves when the tree goes up and the fireplace is on. :)

Thanks for stopping by, I hope everyone is having a nice holiday season!

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Merry Christmas!

My oh my has this Christmas season been a whirlwind! Between school activities, family activities, and all of the tasks that go along with holiday preparations, we have been a very busy family. I haven't been able to sit down and blog for that last two weeks, so I thought I would take a moment this Christmas eve to stop in and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and share a little bit about what we've been up to.

We had a wonderful time at the high school choirs Singing Christmas Tree, this year was a Christmas in Neverland theme. My husband spent a great deal of time at the high school helping to build the set which was pretty elaborate with a pirate ship and lost boys tree. The team who worked on the set did an amazing job! This is my son's senior year, so it was his last year performing in the Singing Christmas Tree as a student. He had an acting part as Wendy's brother John, as well as performing in the Concert choir and Socialaires which is like a jazz choir. A lot of work, but well worth the effort. The show was wonderful!

Joe also had the opportunity to sing with his choir at the hospital and on the radio, so that was also exciting. Last week we invited my littlest niece and nephew over for a Christmassy sleep over. We had fun watching Christmas special, playing, enjoying hot cocoa, and we did a fun glittery craft. I picked up some inexpensive plastic animals, and I gave everyone a brush and a paper muffin cup with a bit of mod podge, we coated the animals in mod podge and then covered them with glitter. They turned out really cute.

The glittered animals look great among all of my glittery floral picks in some of my Christmas displays, we even glittered some dinosaurs which are very fun and whimsical among the Christmas decor. I hope to make a whole glittery menagerie next year, it was a very fun craft! :)

I haven't had as much time as I usually do to bake cookies, I did spend the last couple days baking a pretty good selection though. One of my go to cookies this season was very quick cookies made from Cake mixes. Some I made with Andes thin mints as frosting, others are made by adding Cool Whip to the Cake mix along with an egg or two, but the easiest one are these Crinkle cookies. I made one with Devil's Food Cake Mix, and another with Red Velvet Cake Mix. You just add two eggs and 1/2 a cup of vegetable oil to a box of cake mix, blend it well, then drop a rounded spoonful of dough into a bowl of powdered sugar and really roll the dough around in the powdered sugar to get it very thoroughly coated, then bake on a parchment lined pan at 350 F. for around 8 minutes. Super easy recipe! I got these cute new Santa plates for serving cookies and appetizers throughout the season, and we'll be setting Santa out a plate tonight!

With all of the business this holiday season there have been moments where I was a bit Scroogy, which is really not normal for me, I love Christmas time, but I was definitely a bit overbooked! I have really had to purposefully refocus on the true meaning of this season and remember to keep that joy. I have spent the last few weeks with my Sunday school class walking through the advent stories and lessons. My favorite lesson and simple craft was one that reminded us about Jesus being a light of the world. The craft was a simple candle with a glittered candle light. I cut a red sheet of paper into four quarters, put glue along one edge then rolled up the candle. I made a simple candle light template and cut out that shape, which we stuck down in the candle tube and glued with a bit of glue stick. Then added glue and glitter to the candle light.

I really liked this lesson and the reminder of Jesus being our light in this world. Tonight we attended our church's candlelight service, it was so beautiful, when we pulled into our church parking lot, which is normally quite dark in the evening because we go to a little country church, the parking lot was lined with beautifully lit up luminaries, it was so pretty. We sang some carols, and heard the Christmas story, then lit our candles in our darkened sanctuary. All of the little candles looked so beautiful lit up, and lit up the whole room, a reminder of our savior, who is our light in this world. Tonight when we came home we took time to light our little battery operated light to put in our window as a reminder of that welcoming light.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas!

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Tuesdays With A Twist

Christmas Home Tour 2014

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around our house! I spent last week putting the final touches on my decor and getting ready to host a Christmas party for our church youth group. The Christmas party was a lot of fun and a great way to kick off the festivities. Here is a tour of this year's Christmas decor, glitter is definitely the prevailing theme, I am just drawn to everything glittery right now! :) 

On the dining room table I have set a glittery vintage Christmas scene, I love all of my fox ornaments as well as all of the retro trucks with Christmas trees on top.

I love these little pine cone elves, and if you look in the back of the picture you can see the little retro style camper with a Christmas tree on top, I love retro campers and I was excited find this little ornament. 

For our Christmas party I wanted to do a dessert table with a milk and cookie theme, these little milk glasses were perfect with chevron printed Christmas straws, sadly the kids all opted for soda, but that's okay, I will put the glasses to use at our next party. :)

I made a tray of mini red velvet cupcakes, I always make a few batches of these every Christmas for various events.

I made four different cookies to kick off baking season, you can read the bulk of my cookie recipes in my cookie posts here, and here, or in my baking index on the side bar. I made green colored crispy rice treats, oatmeal scotchies, Andes mint cookies, and molasses cookies.

I set out hot cocoa packets with a jar of peppermint marshmallows, we love hot cocoa this time of year!

I was at target last week to work on my Christmas shopping and found these reindeer and Santa on sale, I just love the way they look and it was nice to update my living room decor a bit, I hadn't changed it much in a few years. This year my living room is a sort of modern vintage glittery theme.

It all started with this little red glitter deer ornament.

This little red glittery deer is perfect for my tiny hall table.

I just fell in love with these vintage deer and the domed Christmas scene, this little display makes me happy every time I see it!

Last year the fireplace mantel was old fashioned Christmas Santas. This year I brought out the flocked metal cone shaped trees that I hadn't used for a few years, I thought they would be perfect with the reindeer.

I love the turquoise with the red and green. The little pine cones in the front are tea light holders from Yankee, this year instead of a Playmobil or Lego advent calendar, since the kids are now young adults, I decided that I would get the Yankee candle advent calendar, each day you open a window and get a new Christmas scented tea light to burn, we have all been enjoying it!

I love the way the Christmas lights reflect off glitter, it really sparkles at night.

The foyer I kept pretty much the same as last year, with only the addition of a couple more floral picks and two faux gold mercury glass candle holders which I found earlier this year. I love this glittery cardboard village.

Back in the dining room I have set out the candles on my craft cupboard flanked by a couple of my favorite nutcrackers, this will have to move to the back bedroom soon to make room for the tree this weekend.

The old world Santas are usually in the living room, this year they find themselves on a book case. I think they look nice next to all the colorful books.

More glittery deer! When I was at Target I wasn't sure about these black reindeer, but I didn't want to leave them and regret it later, which I often do, which necessitates a drive back into town often to find that what I passed on is now sold out, so since they were on sale, I decided it wouldn't hurt. Well it turns out they look pretty cool flanking our TV on the entertainment stand. :)

I also found this cute chalkboard style sign in a dollar bin and it matches the black and red reindeer and our entertainment stand.

I love this cute retro Christmas village that is printed onto wooden boards, I found it on clearance at CB2 this past spring, and I love it, the colors match with everything else in my living room. I decorated around it with glitter star-bursts, and glitter Christmas balls. I also put two glittered red trees behind the village, they reminded me of the tinsel trees that shopping centers would put up in the parking lots when I was a child back in the seventies and early eighties.

Here is the coffee shop up close, with a figure from my very first village, I put out this fellow enjoying his coffee every year. :)

I love the Thrift shop as well, this little village reminds me of shopping in Portland! The set also came with a bar, but we are teetotalers here, so no bars in the Christmas decor, lol! Fortunately three buildings were a better fit for this cabinet anyway.

Well that's the end of my Christmas Home Tour, I look forward to sharing our tree decorations next week. 

I hope everyone is having a nice start tot he holiday season! 

I am also hosting a Christmas Homemaking Hop this December, please stop by and link up your holiday posts. 

Linking to:

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