it's starting to look a lot like christmas

It is officially my favorite time of the year! As soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers were put away, I was getting the Christmas decorations out of the garage. 

I bought this JOY canvas print while on vacation this summer. I love the reindeer in the middle with a little red sleigh bell as it's nose. It matches the wall paint almost perfectly-which is a bit of a bummer, but i still like the way it looks. Since it is only going to stay up for a few weeks we used the Command Photo Strips to hang each canvas up. 

The staircase garland is from Hobby Lobby and was 50% off a few weeks ago so I picked up two 6' long pre-lit garland. The 12' garland was the perfect size for the bottom half of the stairs banister in our house. There is a plug along the baseboard which makes for easy access to turn on and off.

The final "big" decoration in the house up so far is on the mantle above the fireplace. I got this 9' pre-lit garland at Costco when they started putting up their holiday stock. There is also an outlet above the mantle which makes this piece SUPER convenient to turn on and off. I also put up the stockings and the grey/glittery stocking holders, similar here. 

As far as outside decorations go, I have a pre-lit wreath hanging on the front door. This wreath is pretty cool because it has it's own built in timer for the lights. When the timer is activated, the lights are on for six hours and off for 18 hours. No need to worry about turning it off or on at night. 

We are also a house divided when it comes to lights. I prefer the classic look of all white lights-which match the interior of the house, but my other half prefers the multi-colored "party" lights. Keep in mind we live in a historic district in the city where the homes are old and have a lot of charm. What to do when you have a dilemma like this? You shop at Costco! Costco had these three-way outdoor lights that you can set to be either all white, all multi-colored, or both. We have them set on both right now, but that will probably change once it gets closer to Christmas. 

As you can see something major is missing. We are getting our Christmas tree this weekend. The place where the tree is going to sit still has a hole in the wall so we are hoping to get it fixed before-hand, but if not the tree will reside in the dining room for now. More photos to come once the tree gets purchased and decorated.