It's been festive at home since late October.  Yes, I decorated incredibly early and my reason for that is "I want to get my $$$ worth".  I didn't realize until this year that I have a ton of owl things, 80% of my Christmas owl decor are gifts from loved ones.  I wanted to keep the color-scheme the same as last year but this time make it a bit more white with hints of gold and silver sprinkled everywhere.

The only red I had this year was all in my wrapping.  It's sad to say, but this year I wasn't in the mood for wrapping gifts.  I kept it simple with the butcher paper, but used different fabric ribbon, mainly red.  With gift tags I kept it traditional with vintage Christmas stamp set I use every year and kept it uniform, using only one design.


Other than the folks gifting me owl decor; the tree, brass stocking holders, plain bulb ornaments, and pine cone ornaments are all from target. The stockings, and white & gold owl are from anthropologie, and the white porcelain owl cup is from world market.  I would check out all three places right now as they all have after Christmas sales!

I'm thankful that I get to decorate the house the way I want it and M just goes along with it.  He even buys or suggests items while shopping that can definitely go with the decor.  For New Years weekend, I plan to take everything down and re-decorate our console since I bought him a record player for Christmas, and we have a few other new trinkets from Dallas as well.  A small part of me is telling me to keep the decorations until Valentines.  Another month won't hurt! ;)

See last years Christmas Tree here and last years wrappings here and here.

While in Dallas last month, M's brother recommended a place for Antique Shopping.  I was on a search for a few things: bookends, Christmas trinkets, and possibly an ornament to fulfill the tradition.  There was so many good things!  Not to mention, all the vintage Christmas decorations.  I told M if I knew there was going to be this much good stuff, I would of brought an empty carryon!  I found a small handful of goodies, we managed to find not one, but two ornaments!



After roaming around all morning and afternoon, M wanted to show me this bridge close by to his parent's house.  The bridge was the perfect place to snap a photo to place into our ornament.  This time, I actually printed the photos in Walgreens and simply picked them up one day during lunch.  Yes, one hour photo still exists!  I was jokingly telling M that I can fit up to 5 ornaments for our tradition on the Christmas Tree, but he insists we get a bigger one next year.  Mmmm, maybe a new tree next year is a good idea, since the owl ornaments keep growing!  We'll see!

see our first ornament here.

M knows my love for pre-loved treasures.  Anywhere we go or travel he always insists we go to thrift stores and antiques shops to see what trinkets we can find for our home.  Last year when we were in Joshua Tree we were looking over a glass case and he spotted a black vintage floral ornament frame.  He bought it for me and insist we put it in our Christmas Tree.  After placing a big order (free prints) on Shutterfly I printed out a photo of us from hiking and placed it in the frame.  It went perfectly with one of the darker owl ornament, it looks so good!


Do you have any traditions with your significant other?

After moving out of LA County, I wanted to explore and see if there was any tea rooms around Claremont and La Verne.  Surprisingly, there's only 3 that I know so far including Two A Tea.  One day, Steph and I made reservations to a tea house before starting our day of thrifting and catching up.  I came across Barbara's Victorian Tea house.  I recommend making reservations 2-3 weeks in advance as it's hard to book something the week of.  It was my first time going there and I already loved that it was an actual house vs. a tea room in a plaza.

The house was built 125 years ago, and the tea house has been around over 10 years.  I was so in love with the long porch in the front.  We had the traditional 3-4 course with the salad, scones, and sandwiches.  After tea, we went upstairs as they had an antique shop and different rooms had various items.  It was hard to just pick one thing, so I left the antique section empty handed (for now).  I love how festive it is, and i'm hoping to make reservations soon and spent crisps afternoons here.