Christmas Tour of Homes

It's BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes!

Welcome - I'm glad you stopped by to see how we've decorated our house for Christmas!




Let's start at the front door - we've got a real wreath that smells WONDERFUL. It's not as pretty as it was when we first got it. The screen door kind of smashes it but it would be such a project to take the door off we're just letting it be a little squashed.



It's awfully cold and snowy, so let's go inside and on into the family room, where we have our tree. We went with a blue and silver theme and had a lot of fun decorating it the day after Thanksgiving (no black Friday shopping for us!) Yes, that is snow visible outside. We've gotten a lot the last few days, and I love it!



A closeup of the star on top of the tree. L fit a light up into the star so it looks extra pretty at night.



One of my favorite ornaments - a blown glass snowman!



More closeups of ornaments I love, this time a snowflake and disco ball.



Some presents are already wrapped and waiting under the tree. L did a great job wrapping the gifts for me; I am very impressed with his wrapping skills. They are much better than my photography and image staging skills that's for sure!



The large brown box is for L; he knows what it is since it's something fairly techy and I wanted him to pick out exactly what he wanted rather than me possibly getting the wrong thing. I wrapped it with inside-out grocery bags and taped candy canes to it to make it a little less brown-blob-like. It's not ideal, but it's really big and heavy and this was the best I could do. :)



A partial view of the cards, stocking holders, and stockings from the mantle. We're really light on cards so far, if it's like other years we'll get a lot this next week. I didn't take a picture of the entire mantle & mirror above it because there are some photo cards included and didn't feel comfortable putting other people's photos on my blog, even if they would be small and not really identifiable.



Here are some closeups of the stocking holders. The tree survived a tumble off the mantle and landed in a plant, getting quite dirty and slightly bent in the process. The dirt washed off, and the damage is hard to spot. I'm glad it landed in the plant because if it had hit the hard floor the slight break would surely have been a complete breaking off of the top of the tree.





Finally, here is a cozy throw that's on the futon across from the tree. It has more to it than is shown, but that's all that would fit neatly when I folded it to put it on the futon. It really adds something to that space I think. And it's warm too - I've spent some time in there reading and enjoying the lights and the throw helps warm up what is otherwise usually a pretty chilly room.



This is practically our first year to put up decorations - we had stockings last year but nothing else. And no stocking holders for them so they were just draped on the couch rather than hanging from the fireplace mantle. So even though I don't have a lot of decorations compared to some, I'm really happy with what I have and how it looks.

Oh, I almost forgot about refreshments! It's a very well known recipe, but it just might be my favorite cookie - wedding cookies/tea cakes/whatever name you know them as.

WEDDING COOKIES / TEA CAKES

1 cup butter (yes, real butter, not margarine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus more
3/4 cup chopped pecans (toasted is better) (or almonds if you must)

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Mix butter, sugar, and vanilla. Stir in flour, nuts and salt until dough holds together. Shape into 1" balls and place them about 1" apart on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake 10 - 15 minutes or until set but not brown.

Roll in powdered sugar while still warm. Cool. Roll in powdered sugar again.

Here's a picture of them right out of the oven, before the powdered sugar step. I forgot to take a picture of them after being rolled in the sugar, and they're long gone so I can't take another. Must make some more soon...