It's here….

Christmas season….Advent season….celebrating St. Nicholas….making ornaments with the kids that will get hung on the tree, a little (lot) of hot chocolate, hearing Luke play 'It's Christmas Time' on the piano, watching Charlie Brown's Christmas and reading our favorite Christmas books.

I started decorating our home this weekend.  Still have more to go.  I was lucky because my oldest was at an Advent retreat at our church Saturday afternoon (so it bought me 3 hours) and I was able to get a lot accomplished.  This year I used real Cedar in our home.  I used it on our banister, FP mantel and entry into the kitchen.  In the past,  I've either used artificial or a mix of pine and fir, but I am officially switching to Cedar.  I love the smell - heavenly!!

This is our kitchen and I kept it simple.  Trader Joe's mini wreaths on the windows ($5 each) with a simple ribbon on the bottom of the wreath.  I can't tie bows for the life of me.  A white poinsettia I picked up at Home Depot while picking up anchors to hang up our super heavy mirror in the entry.  You can also see bits of the cedar popping in the picture which I (I mean my husband) hung around our kitchen doorway (I plan on hanging our cards here).

This was the first year I attempted to put together planters for our front entry.  Ideally, I would love to have mini fir trees with lights, but they were pricey.  This was free!  I clipped branches off our Christmas tree as well as our magnolia tree out back and some berries I picked up at TJs (well, they cost  about $5).

We finally got our tree into the house, but no lights or ornaments just yet.  We focused on celebrating St. Nick and prepping for friends coming over this week to help make ornaments and cookies.

And, yesterday, I made Jenny Steffens Hobick's roasted pork tenderloin which is the easiest recipe in the world to make and tastes delicious (I always make it when we have guests).  ANd, the kids love it too which means its a keeper.  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!  And, if you are on IG, I am sorry for the repeat of pictures and I loved seeing all of your Holiday pictures!!