Christmas Things

How is your December going? Ours is busier than usual and, to be honest, busier than I’d like. I love the festive feeling of the month, but it’s a *tiny* bit too much for this introvert.

Today, however, I’m cozied up at home because Kansas City is a winter wonderland. We got 8-ish inches of snow yesterday and maybe another inch of light snow today and it is so pretty.

So today seemed like a good day to pop on here to share with you some Christmas things I’ve found and bookmarked to make the holidays a little more festive. Here are some of my favorites.

How pretty is this Christmas table with the unexpected blue added in? This tablescape was actually from a charming winter wedding if you’d like to see more.

Elin Hilderbrand, who normally writes about summer on Nantucket, has a series of books set on Nantucket at Christmastime. I read the first, Winter Street several years ago. This year I’m picking the series back up with book #2, Winter Stroll. Winter Storms (#3) and Winter Solstice (#4) round out the series, which follows the saga of the Quinn family.

Speaking of reading, Modern Mrs. Darcy has a list of 86 holiday books that includes holiday romance, holiday mystery, and books set during (but not necessarily about) the holidays. I couldn’t bookmark it fast enough (and I ordered the most recommended title right off the top).

I bought this set of TableTopics cards (questions to start great conversations) a while back and we used them after Thanksgiving dinner this year. That went over well enough that I bought a different set for Christmas. They’ve got sets for families, kids, teens, couples, dinner parties, even book clubs. You can see the whole collection here.

How fun are these vintage-look Christmas bubble lights? Nell Hills carried them this year but was sold out when I was there in October. I’ve since seen them several places, including Amazon.

I love the simplicity of this live, tabletop tree decorated with orange slices and starfish (and that goregous brass pot it’s in came from Goodwill!). You can see the whole German-inspired home tour here.

I was also struck by this tree from The Cottage Journal. Even though I love a theme tree, there’s something so charming about all the family ornaments (and a ton of lights).

This salad has “harvest” in the name, but I think it would work well at Christmas too.

This is a repeat, but I wanted to let you know that ordering these takeout containers for Thanksgiving worked great. As we were cleaning up after dinner, everyone loaded up the leftovers they wanted and wrote their names on the boxes in sharpie. There was no hunting for plastic containers and lids in my cabinets, and no one had to worry about getting containers back to me (or not!). These worked so well, in fact, that my mom asked me to bring some to the family Christmas dinner at her house last weekend and we did the same thing again.

Do you have something that’s making your holidays a little sweeter? I’d love to hear.

P.S. Christmas in Rome and Movies to Wrap To.