Jingle bells! Batman Smells! Robin laid an egg. Batmobile lost a wheel and Joker did ballet.
What? You didn’t sing that song at camp while wearing culottes and a tie-dyed shirt? Well I did. Anyway, the point is that I hung the stockings and did a little extra Christmas decorating beyond putting up the tree (just in time to put it all away in about a week when we start packing for the big move in mid December). Gotta celebrate Clara’s first Christmas, even if it’s only for a hot second. Out came the ol’ feather trees (from Target and a local store called Buford Road Pharmacy a few years back) along with the same ol’ Target stockings that we’ve been enjoying for the past few Christmases:
Since the stockings and the feather trees were from a few years past, I decided I wanted to do something new to spice things up – but I didn’t want to spend much money. So piggybacking off of our pink and silver tree, I picked up two pretty sheets of wrapping paper from a local gift shop (Mongrel) and grabbed a roll of silver wrapping paper while I was at it. Then I raided our gift closet for boxes and ribbon. I ended up having a ton of empty gift boxes and even had my fair share of pink and silver ribbon thanks to welcoming a baby girl six months ago (I’m totally that cheap-o who saves all the ribbon along with the boxes /bags from gifts that we receive over the years).
So my little stacks of eleven faux-gifts (since they’re just empty boxes that I wrapped for effect) were accomplished for the cost of the gift wrap (around $7 or so). I think they’re sweet and kind of vintage-ish, plus the fact that there’s a touch of yellow in some of the paper really works with our yellow rug in there. They’re so cute I’m thinking that I might save them and work them into the decor every year somehow…
And of course Mr. Concrete Greyhound now has his Christmas best on (read: I tied a gold ribbon that I already had around his neck, but don’t tell him that).
I also made little card stock tags for each stocking (John and I shared one labeled “Mom & Dad” so both Clara and Burger would have their own). Then I tied some extra ribbon around them so they relate to my little stacks of faux gifts. Took two minutes.
With the candles in the fireplace burning and the tree all plugged in it’s more festive than ever. I’m so glad we took the time to put things out, even if it’s only going to be enjoyed for a short time.
Are you guys decorating yet? It’s officially December so I feel a lot less odd about breaking out the holiday cheer. Is there anyone else who’s moving but still putting some stuff up to enjoy it just for a little while?
Psst- Check out a ton of holiday decorating and gifting ideas in this section of our Projects page. Ho, ho, ho.
Update: You can check out all of our favorite holiday decor finds here – many of which are under $15!
Jenn the Pen says
No, I’m not decorating yet. My daughter’s been at her dad’s on the weekends & I refuse to do it without her. Also, my mom always said she didn’t get ready for Christmas until it snowed. She was raised in Atlanta so I have no idea where THAT came from, but it carried over to my life. Living in TN helps a little with the snow but not much!
Emily says
Um that horrid song is now in my head. Thanks. ha.
I love the candles in the fireplace and your shared stocking. I totally still have ribbons and bags (and tissue paper) from when my daughter was born 19 months ago. Reusing is so much friendlier than trashing. :)
jeanne says
Note to self:
must start holiday decorating. the house is 2 days behind!
Note to YHL:
thanks for the nudge! love the candles in the fireplace…
if you are moving and you can do it.. then us non-movers can get a move on!
Katie Lake says
We always sing “The batmobile lost a wheel and Joker ran away.”
r8chel says
Looks great! I’m impressed by your ability to use non-traditional colors and still have it look Christmasy! But aren’t you nervous about having those ceramics perched so high?!
This year I’m in a new house, so it’s fun to figure out how to decorate a very, VERY different space. I’ve always enjoyed decorating doorways, but this house has an open floor plan, so our only door frames lead to rooms like bedrooms, bathrooms, and the laundry room. I did stitch up a garland of paper circles to hang over the kids’ bathroom door (like those bead curtains from the ’70s)… and then of course they each wanted one for their bedroom doors!
Another new thing I did this year was make my own advent calendar to hang in our house. On the back of each day’s tag, I’m writing a Christmas activity for the kids to do. Yesterday we ate red and green pancakes for breakfast! I’m especially looking forward to Saturday when we’ll go pick out a tree. :)
my paper circle garland:
http://r8chel.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/hanging-strings-of-paper-christmas-garlands/
my handmade advent calendar:
http://r8chel.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/a-handmade-advent-calendar/
my pathetic green and red pancakes:
http://r8chel.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/advent-day-1-christmas-pancakes/
YoungHouseLove says
I know those pears look precarious in the pics, but they’re not going anywhere! I couldn’t bear to part with them, so I only decided to place them at the top of each stack after a lot of stomping and swaying to ensure they wouldn’t fall…
xo,
s
Amanda says
When you decorate your tree do you just put the ornaments on the tips on the branches so you don’t have any “in” the tree, or do you do both? It looks so full and amazing, just wondering your trick.
YoungHouseLove says
We do both. We usually stick those bows further “in” and hang ornaments more towards the tips.
xo,
s
Caitlin says
I love those feather trees and I could definitely see those gift boxes worked into your everyday decor! So cute :)
So far I’ve decorated our entryway/console table, our living room and our dining room! Photos of our console table and living room are up on my blog (www.desertdomicile.blogspot.com) and, if all goes well, I’m planning on posting photos of my dining room tomorrow!
Law Mama says
I’m still trying to figure out how Christmas decor will work with my just turned one year old. He’s pulling up and standing on everything, I’m hoping that doesn’t include the tree! How’s Clara doing with mobility? I remember my guy being pretty slow at 6 months (he would actually stay on a blanket!). Is she into the tree?
YoungHouseLove says
Not yet! Next year’s going to be a while different ball game though!
xo,
s
Annalea says
I totally sang that song . . . but it was at school, (complete with culottes), and we ended it with “and the Joker got awaaaaay, HEY!”
Love the little touches you added. It makes me want to decorate. :o)
Heather says
Love this so much. The last shot of the fireplace with all the candles is so gorgeous. My fiance doesn’t want our fireplace to be functional, so I can’t wait to steal that look for our own home.
Just out of curiousity, how many candles are down there? It looks like a lot!
I definitely feel more in the Christmas spirit now!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Heather,
There’s a silver tray full 10 of candles (all in varying heights because I burned some longer than others). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Sugar says
I love how modern everything looks. Those wrapped presents on the mantel are fantasticness. I’d steal the look if we only had a mantel!
amy good house says
We moved into our new-to-us house last December 19th!! It was total insanity and also the day of a big snowstorm!
Since it was right before Christmas and I do a lot of holiday shopping online, I had all my presents delivered to my office, and stored them in a duffle bag under my desk. Once we were moved in, I brought all the presents home to wrap!
Are you moving in the day of closing or do you have some over-lap time??
I recommend doing a vigorous cleaning of the fridge, sink, oven, bathrooms, cabinets, and all the floors and windows before you actually bring all your stuff inside! I also found it helpful that we painted all our ceilings white before moving in the furniture – it made painting the rooms that much easier knowing that the ceilings were done. (I know you like to paint your ceilings other colors, but it could be good to start with a clean palette!)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Amy,
We’re moving the day of closing, so after we bring in the last box we’ll definitely start tackling everything from painting to cleaning and hopefully a smidge of holiday decor in the new place too!
xo,
s
Heather says
I love love love your wrapped boxes idea. I’ve seen big faux wrapped gifts at malls and such, but using smaller boxes for mantle decoration is very clever!
Megan says
We already decorated, with the help of our 4 yr old and 7 month old girls. Unfortunetly, we don’t have matching stocking like you. (My 4 yr old won’t go for it! argh..haha.) But after seeing this post.. I may need to go add a few things. :)
emily says
Ooo! Ooo! I just realized that you guys have the same fireplace front as my fiance and I. Did you guys paint it white? Ours is a brass gold color and I’m not a fan. I mentioned to my fiance a few weeks ago that we should spray paint it silver. But now that I see these pictures I’m thinking white (our brick is also white). Thanks again for the great ideas!
YoungHouseLove says
Yes we just painted it! Metal takes really well to paint, so you can even pick up high heat spray paint from the hardware store (although we just used regular white paint). Good luck!
xo,
s
RLR says
There’s a December birthday in our family, so we usually wait until after the birthday to decorate. I was hoping we’d decorate a bit earlier this year, but… We have recently repurposed (read: cleared out) the room where we’ll be putting the tree, and I think I decided this morning that I’ll be painting it next week before we actually put up the tree. It’s madness, truly – we’ve been cleaning out and paring down, garage sale-ing and craigslist-ing – and now I’m on a roll! Thanks for the inspiration and encouragement that you provide by sharing your home improvement adventures with us. Knowing that “it’s just paint” makes this kind of project seem so much more manageable! We painted our laundry room with a split-second decision in June, and things have just kept going from there….
Lonely Wife Project says
Nothing cuter than vintage-y Christmas! I just posted about my dream vintage Christmas.
http://thelonelywifeproject.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/vintage-christmas/
Kayla says
Love your non-traditional Christmas decor. Trying to figure out where to put some decorative wrapped boxes!!!! Love it!
Pammy says
We move on Saturday, so we haven’t done any decorating yet and it’s killing me!! I can’t wait to put our tree up so that I can feel like it’s the holidays :)
Katherine @ says
The ribbon may be pink, but saving and reusing is very green. It looks soft and festive.
Audrey says
Yup, all decorated as of the Saturday after Thanksgiving – my parents went home, my man left for a business trip, and I was all alone, so I decorated my heart out! We’ve only got a baby tree on the table thuogh, cause we don’t have enough room for a full sized tree. Someday…
I totally sang the Batman song! We always said “and Joker took ballet” like you did.
Also, ‘culottes’ is French for ‘panties’… what does it mean in English, since I doubt your mom sent you to camp in your skivvies? ;)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Audrey,
Culottes were these trendy loose skirt-like shorts that sometimes had a skirt flap in the front. So they looked like a skirt coming towards you, but like shorts when the person was walking away. So weird! Glad that fad has passed.
xo,
s
Lindsey Portugal says
We have had our Christmas decor up since before Halloween. :) I just can’t help myself. This year I made a new centerpiece for our dining room table. Its on my blog at
http://portugalponderings.blogspot.com/2010/10/christmas-decorations-at-portugal-house.html
I love your idea of the wrapped packages. My mom used to have these very large glass cabinets that use to house the dickens houses that when up at Christmas. They would then stuff them with all the normal year-round decor at Christmas time. Then we would wrap the cabinets and time them with a bow. It took hours but was SUPER fun..
sarah says
Love the wrapped packages idea.
Julie says
I loooooove your decorations. They are beautiful. I’m a tad jealous, but I’ll get over it, HAHA :) It looks so perfect like straight out of a magazine. We have not started decorating yet. I’m trying to decide if we should get a real tree like we always do or get a fake smaller tree. We are in an apartment with not as much room as previously had. :( But we’re still going to decorate!!! :)
D says
Love it! Understated and so not “it’s Christmas” in your face…good job!
J'Anns Boutique says
Looks great!
Lauren says
Brilliant! I just bought new, matching stockings (first time we’ve ever had matching ones and I love it!) and was trying to figure out how to make known whose is whose without doing something permanent (but still making them pretty). Lo and behold you have solved my mystery!
Sara @ House Bella says
Very pretty! My Christmas decorations are coming out as slow as humanly possible, for some unknown reason. Though I did do a little winter tablescape that makes me smile when I walk past (it might make me smile because it uses fabric from our wedding, but I can’t be sure) : http://housebella.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/winter-tablescape/
Our living room is still in a state of uproar and not-enough-furniture, so I’m using that as my pitiful excuse to not have up Christmas decorations. Lame!
Lily says
Looks great! Just a little pre-warning for when Clara is more independently mobile – a friend of mine’s toddler was blinded in one eye when she tried to pull herself up on a stocking hung with one of those heavy hang-over-the-edge-of the mantle hooks.
In your new house, you might want to consider hanging your stockings with Command strip hooks until your little one is old enough to not want to use a stocking as a leg up.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Lily,
Thanks for the warning! We’re definitely not planning to use a lot of this year’s decor next year when Clara’s more mobile for her safety. It’s going to be a while new ball game then!
xo,
s
Lisa says
Hey guys! Love the Xmas decor! You may have answered this already but I can’t find it…where did you get those stockings? So cute!
YoungHouseLove says
Target! Love them.
xo,
s
kristine says
we also sang “…the Joker got away”
this might be one of those mistaken song lyric instances :)
paige says
Our packers came on December 26th for our cross-country move three years ago. I tried to condense everything else in the house as much as possible, did more minimal Christmas decorating, and added lots of disposable decorating elements, rather than getting everything out or do without (neither appealed). The minute our littles were in bed on December 25th, the tree came down, the stockings and fireplace decor packed away. We left the pine garland and wreath and beautiful paper snowflakes for the owners to enjoy. Not perfect, but we all remember that Christmas fondly.
Elizabeth says
We grew up calling them culottes, but I think most people would call them skorts now.
I have not decorated inside yet, but the day after Thanksgiving I put up all my outside decorations including the numerous poinsettas that I am obssessed with buying every year at 6am when they are on sale for 98 cents!
The inside shouldn’t take too long since my tree stays decorated in the offseason under a sheet in the garage. It is an alpine tree with a real wood trunk that doesn’t collapse in any way, so there’s really no point in taking all the decorations off and putting them back on. I am changing out a few things on the tree this year though to match my newly painted and redecorated living room!
Jessica says
Wow! I’m not sure I could muster the motivation to set up a tree AND put out the rest of my decorations just to take them out again so soon! Good for you guys. The pictures and memories will be priceless. I’m so excited for our son’s first Christmas that our tree has been out since the middle of November… wicked lame… I know. I’ve been a closet-Christmas-music-listener since the week before Thanksgiving. But just in the last few days I’ve actually purchased a few nice mantel decorations and put them out!
rachel says
We are in the middle of house construction. Things are running a little behind. Shocking, I know. Anyway, all our Christmas decoration are 30 feet deep in the POD. We had to get a bit creative because I didn’t want to rebuy a bunch of decorations. We hauled out an old wooden ladder and rigged it up with some sweet retro lights. My girls and I love it. Don’t ever want to go evergreen again. We will have to see what the pine-scented hubs has to say…..
KCatGU says
I think it is rocking that you and John share a stocking, a few years ago when my mother in-law informed her son (my h) that she was only going to do joint stockings for married children he brought out the best pouty face and as a result continues to get his own stocking. hehe. Apparently they are a keep part of the holiday for him.
Jen at Castles and Carriages says
This will be my son’s first Christmas too. Christmas is my favorite holiday so I am all about Christmas decorations. I wait until Thanksgiving is over then out come all of my ornaments. I have enough ornaments to fill several trees!
Stephanie Messmer says
I love the candles in the fireplace and want to do the same in ours this year since we don’t use the fireplace anyway. Where did you find your candles? It seems like a large amount to buy in order to pull off the look how it should be pulled off. Also, do you have some of the candles elevated? It appears that way in the picture but I can’t quite tell. Love it!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Stephanie,
All of the candles came from Target a few years back (although you might want to keep an eye out for them at the dollar store or Michael’s to save some moolah). We just burned them for different lengths of time, resulting in the varied heights that you see. There are ten of them on the same silver tray- which keeps them all corralled nicely. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Kate says
Holy moly, did you guys see this?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/02/behind-scenes-look-time-lapse-white-house-christmas-tree
I think ya’ll should get a tax credit or something for giving the Fed PR ideas. :)
YoungHouseLove says
That’s pretty funny! Gotta love how many people got in on that action!
xo,
s
Sarah B says
I love how your Holiday decor works perfectly with the feel of your house!
I moved out of my parents’ house into my first place in September so I was feeling pretty sparse in the decoration department. I managed to acquire decorations from a number of sources, and so far I’ve put up and decorated the tree and I’ve put up our outside decorations (minus the wreath that I can’t decide how to decorate). Pics of our Pottery Barn-inspired outdoor garland on my blog: http://younghipandhandy.blogspot.com/2010/12/gorgeous-garland-on-cheap.html
Newlyweds on a Budget says
I put my tree up on Sunday and someone said that was “too soon.” Bah humbug!
Lindy says
We are also moving mid Dec this year, so I have not put any decorations out. I’m hoping we can put some things up after we move, at least the tree. If I didn’t have 3 kids I’d probably just skip it altogether. Not that I don’t love Christmas, but this year we’ll be moving and my husband is deployed, so its not feeling much like Christmas…
Stephanie says
I love your ornaments! They look so sparkly and cheery without being cheesy! Have you guys posted anything about them yet?
YoungHouseLove says
Yes! Just follow the link in this post to our tree decorating post (from last week) full of ornament info. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Amanda says
I love everything, but especially your wrapped boxes- that paper is so pretty!
jbhat says
I too love those cunning little gift-wrapped boxes. Your Xmas decor is simple and lovely.
jbhat
Monika says
I really like the boxes you wrapped on the mantel! I always see so many rolls of beautiful wrapping paper and this is a great way to showcase it year after year.
Gina at Temporary Nest says
OMG I love the stacks of presents!! I think I might steal that idea! I put up some decoration just recently and its feeling empty but as you always suggest- I need to gather things over time. I cant just buy them all at once! So, a few faux prezzie’s added might do the trick! Any other suggestions?
http://temporary-nest.blogspot.com/2010/11/fa-la-la-la-la.html
Lauren says
Just thought I’d share a funny story: I’m a nanny for a family with two boys. We were singing the Batman version of Jingle Bells and when we got to the end, I said, “and Joker ran away…” as they proceeded to say, “and Joker did ballet…” I had never heard that version before and they told me that “it’s a new thing” to say that the Joker did ballet. Apparently it’s not a new thing, though! Thanks for the smile! And I am in love with your Christmas decorations… :)
P.S. You guys gave me save-the-date help on Facebook and I greatly appreciate it! The pictures came out awesome!
YoungHouseLove says
Wahoo! I was beginning to think I was going crazy, but it does exist! And the “cool kids” sing it that way. Haha. Love it.
xo,
s
Kel says
I admire your motivation with the pre christmas decorating and then pulling it down so quickly. I won’t be putting my decorations up this year as we too are on the move with the removalists coming somewhere between Boxing Day & NYE. It will be the second consecutive year that the decorations will stay in their boxes. Although if i had children I know I would decorate for them. Childern do make Christmas that little bit more special. Enjoy your first Christmas with Clara.
P.S. Love the wrapped packages idea they are simple and very effective.
Carmen @ Life with Sprinkles on Top says
Oh it all looks so cute! I just love the faux gifts. It’s nice to decorate even if it’s for a short time. Our house is all decorated and now I’m cleaning up from the decorating. You know decorating is messy business. :)