When I was in GA, Nikki and I went over to her friend’s house, who also happens to be an interior decorator. While we were there we got to cute holiday-house ideas that I thought I should share.

1-Framed Santa Pics: Obviously, over the years, we will build up quite a collection of Santa pics. (side note: Sadly, we don’t have one from Sam’s first Christmas because I was too scared to have him go sit in the lap of a germy mall Santa when he was just 2 months old and we were in the height of H1N1 season. Oh well. We started the tradition this year.) Nikki’s friend Keri had all of her kid’s Santa pics framed in matching red frames. They were different sizes (5×7, 4×6, square, etc.) but all bright red frames. Simple and cute. Nikki and I decided to copy this idea, but instead of buying all the same frames we are just going to buy a new red frame every year. I think it will have a cohesive feel because they will still all be the same color. Then at Chistmas time I can just clear off some shelf space for my collection. Hopefully it will be a simple yet festive display. Here is the first one:

2- The other thing I loved that Keri had done was create a scrapbook to house all of her family Christmas cards that she’s sent out over the years. This may seem like an obvious idea and maybe most of y’all are already doing this, but it hadn’t even occurred to me. I like to keep a copy of our holiday card each year, but so far I have just been cramming them in a drawer. So Nikki and I went to Hobby Lobby and got matching scrapbooks and black insert pages (so the cards really pop!). Keri’s scrapbook was red, which I do think would be more festive, but they didn’t have any red ones. I think black will be nice too. And with the festive picture in the front window, it will be obvious that it’s a holiday book. So now, every December I can pull out this book along with our other decorations and proudly display it for all to admire:

My goal is to write something on these pages (the year, maybe a sentence or two) in silver or gold pen perhaps…

3- This third idea is not from Keri but from a blog I read. It’s an advent calendar for grown-ups! Each day you get to pull down a different ornament to hang on the tree. The original idea is actually from Pottery Barn.

But at bowerpowerblog.com, they have instructions on how to make your own! I think I am going to use a bulletin board that I DIYed earlier this year. I was inspired by this one from Ballard that my friend Janna has in her home. I think it turned out really cute except that it has ugly little seam lines going through the cork because I used cork tiles (I couldn’t find big sheets of cork anywhere). I’m definitely going to copy their idea of spray gluing some nice linen on the cork. Then I can finally hang up the cork board in our living room. When Christmas rolls around this year, I will hopefully have all of my ornaments and number tags ready to go and can just swap them out for whatever I have up there at the time. I’ll be sure to post a pic once the cork board is up! In the meantime, here are a few pics of my Ballard inspired bulletin board in the making: