14 ways to have a fresh and festive holiday

My all time favorite holiday in the year is Christmas. Our family loves celebrating the birth of Christ. We try to get our home ready for this beautiful season early and do our best in dilly dallying to delay putting away all the decorations in January. In celebration of all things Christmas (yes including the awesome Christmas Carnival of Giveaways and the 30 day giving Challenge), I thought it was apt to respond to the new Twitter Moms and Snuggle prompt to share 14 ways to get your home looking (and smelling!) fresh and festive this Christmas...

1. Get the home smelling 'Christmassy' with some Apple Cinnamon Scentsy bars or go natural...boil some water with a few slices of lemon( or orange), a few sticks of Cinnamon and a few Cloves in the same.
   
2. The other day while I was driving home after dropping Bunny girl to school, our local Christian radio station shared a great 'Christmas Scent' tip that I can't wait to try. Fill a quilted sleeve with some pot pourri and seal it up well. Then the next time you take a hot pan off the stove, place it on the sleeve and it will effuse warm fragrant scents through the home.
   
3. If you have young ones at home, who can use kid proof scissors, help them create snowflakes. Draw out a template and then fold the snowflake in half and let them cut little squares, circles or slithers. Open out the sheet and you will have some pretty snowflakes. You can stick these on the balcony doors, windows or just hang them on a ledge.
4. We love Crayola's Window Crayons. Last year our apartment windows were the rage! Bunny girl and I drew Christmas trees and mistletoes and our windows looked happy, festive and really special as they had a 3 year old's imprint all over!
5. The previous year we bought a whole bunch of maroon Christmas bows from Target at the 90% clearance sale after Christmas. You can be sure that we went to town with them. We hung bows on the door ledges, curtain frames, on every door, even on our kitchen cabinets. I honestly thought the overall look was very festive and we had friends compliment us on how happy our home looked.
6. Back home, during our honeymoon we'd picked up beautiful pine cones from the forest. A week before we put up our Christmas decorations, we spray painted a handful of them in silver and placed them in a coir bowl as a centerpiece for our table. We threw the unpainted ones under the tree to give an overall natural 'out in the woods' look.
7. You can also use the left over Christmas ornament balls and throw them into a wide open mouthed glass vase or a bowl and place them on the side tables with a tinsel placemat. These look really 'Christmassy'!
8. Get the little ones to help with the decorating. I love the Christmas Crafts Danielle's Place has. We're planning to make the felted gingerbread men to stick around Bunny girl's room and maybe a few areas around my kitchen. The work the little ones do may not be perfect but they will be treasured in the years to come!
9. Christmas is never complete without a Nativity Scene. Bunny girl generally pulls out her toys and re-creates the Nativity Scene near the tree. This always looks so precious especially as the stable animals sometimes look like giants in the scene.
10. Oh and Christmas always means you have to have tinsel on the tree. We love the reds and golds...always makes the tree look grand and reminds us of Christ's royal heritage and the birth of a King.
11. Our tree also has an angel on the tip of the tree. We generally get the oldest and the youngest member of the family, place the angel on the tip together. The angels remind us of that heavenly chorus that day in Bethlehem.
    
12. We also love placing a set of golden bells over one door's arch to symbolize the ringing in of Christ's birth
    
13. This year we can't wait to also place a star outside our home to remind us of the Star that led the Wise men and the Shepherds to the stable. (Last year we couldn't place one outside because it would've been stolen from outside the apartment.... Can you believe we even had a 5$ doormat stolen once?!)
    
14. And finally how could I ever forget about a Christmas wreath. The bigger the better...placed right outside your door. What a great way to invite your guests into your warm festive home.
    

Decorating one's home during Christmas is fun and it's even more meaningful if you can tie in elements of the Christmas story with Christ's birth to remind especially little ones that Jesus is the reason for this season.


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** EBMR Disclaimer: “I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Snuggle blogging program, making me eligible to get a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here” **

Labels: Christmas, Mommy Tips, Snuggle., Twitter Moms

posted by Marina@EBMR @ 7:25 PM