Christmas Windows and some Additions to the Christmas Collections

This year’s living and dining room decorations are snowflakes made of 16″ doilies. They are a variation of the paper bag snowflakes I made a few years ago. I found the directions on an Instagram account @woodlark.

The kitchen garland is full of elves!

I found the vintage Santa elf at a store in Andersonville and he inspired me to make some elves out of pipe cleaners and vintage elf faces like the Halloween cats and pumpkins I learned to make from a Martha Stewart Living magazine a long time ago.

After I hung them all up, I realized they needed pom poms for their hats, so I took them down one by one to add those.

As soon as an ad for the Dala horse on the right popped up on Instagram, we made a trip to World Market to buy him. He’ll actually stay on the shelf year round even after those gnomes are gone.

While we were at World Market, we also bought a little red mixer to add to the kitchen ornaments.

While we have elves in the kitchen, we have gnomes on the shelves. On the left of the top shelf is a new gnome that my friend Jen sent from Northampton. The gnome on a pile of books that I won at Rushmer Christmas last year fits perfectly in front of the bookend that is usually on the second shelf from the bottom. On the right of the top shelf is a new tiny painted branch gnome I bought at Neighborly in Lincoln Square.

I bought the large one on the left at a craft fair in Northampton many years ago. One of my granddaughters made the middle one at Breakfast with Tomten at the Swedish museum several years ago. We’ve never been to Breakfast with Tomten, but when we went to see the St. Lucia procession in Andersonville, we parked in front of a store called Vase and Vessel. We stopped in on our way back to the car and bought a wooden tree for our newest Christmas collection. At first, I was afraid it was too small, but I loved its shape and the dark color and grain of the wood, and it turned out to be the perfect addition.

With gnomes on the shelves, wooden trees on the CD case, and all the rest of the decorations in their usual places, we are all cozy for this month and next!