By now you’ve seen bits and pieces of several projects I’ve been working on this year to make our first Christmas in our first house extra special.  Here’s all the Christmas goodness we’ve got in our house — both homemade and store bought.

I got these awesome, coastal burlap stockings from Zulily earlier this year — thanks to Maggie for sending the link to me!  They edged out the college stockings, and definitely look better with the rest of our ‘coastal’ decor.

The rest of my mantle is full of my driftwood reindeer, a cardinal from Pine Mountain, my new stocking holders, the burlap Christmas trees from last year, some garland and shells.

After finding a huge (fake) shell from Hobby Lobby, I was excited to fill it with blue and silver ornaments.

I pulled out a few Christmas books I’ve collected to replace the book pile on our ottoman.  If you haven’t heard of Robert Sabuda, you need to check out his ‘Night Before Christmas’ book — it’s amazing!

I always have mason jars lying around, and filled some with shells, ornaments and small glittery balls that can be found around the house.

The top of our new media cabinet is topped with (fake) antlers that I spray painted, and oyster shells filled with miniature glittery balls.  The crab bowl also got some ornaments and glittery balls to hold.

Since we had an 8′ tree, we had plenty of room for ornaments, which meant I finally had a home for some ornaments I’ve held onto for years.  I like to get an ornament from places I’ve visited (just like our family does), so the tree becomes filled with memories.  I was excited to hang some oldies and newbies, and fill in the rest with blue, mercury glass and shell ornaments.

We have received more holiday cards this year than any other year, so I hung some ribbon on the pantry and displayed all the cards there.  Thanks to everyone who sent a card — I love seeing your faces every time I’m in the kitchen!

I can’t forget my wine cork Christmas tree centerpiece that took weeks and lots of bottles of wine to finally finish from last year! It has a home on the dining table.

We also had some fun decorating outside, and re-did the lights twice.  My favorite are the candle lights in the window, which remind me of what we had growing up.  There’s also a tree in the backyard with lights going halfway up, and then a huge ball of the rest of the string where I gave up. Oops.  Maybe I’ll finish that before New Years?

I also updated my window box with some colorful kale.  Not exactly Christmas, but you can barely see the Noel candle holders from last year in the window sill if that counts.

Cheers to our first Christmas in 2433!  I’d say it’s turned out pretty well (although we never made a tree topper..)!