Ryan and I are leaving for Florida after work and Girls On The Run today. We’ll sleep at my parents’ place in Jacksonville tonight to help break up the 10+ hour drive to Sarasota where we will be spending Thanksgiving with my in-laws. I swear I can already taste my mother-in-law’s pineapple soufflé and Ryan’s grandma’s glazed carrots!
Since we’ll be away for Thanksgiving, I used that as an excuse to decorate our house for Christmas last weekend so we can come home to a fully Christmasified house!
(Do you like our teeny-tiny angel tree topper? We’re using an angel ornament until we find a legit tree topper we like. And yes, there are already presents under our tree for our family members. I have a present-buying problem.)
And now for a super-short game of “Where’s Sadie?”
Peek-a-boo!
Sadie was not exactly a fan of my Christmas décor photo shoot this morning…
It got in the way of her sleepy snuggle time. She’s definitely not a morning dog… Unless you say the word “WALK!”
In addition to decorating the inside of our house for Christmas, Ryan and I put up all of our outdoor Christmas lights last night. (We tried to hold off, I promise!) Since the weather has warmed up significantly since last week, it wasn’t a miserable experience and we only needed a light jacket to keep warm.
Even though it wasn’t too chilly outside, we still used the whole “decorating for Christmas” excuse to break out some hot chocolate. And so, the first Fagan family Christmas gift was opened before Thanksgiving! I am so ashamed.
I gave Ryan a gift to open early because we both wanted hot chocolate and there’s one kind of hot chocolate that reigns supreme in our household.
Williams-Sonoma peppermint hot chocolate is the best. It’s made from chocolate shavings, not powder, making it extra rich and creamy.
Ryan and I first fell in love with the hot chocolate after sipping on a free sample at Williams-Sonoma years ago when we lived in Orlando. We ended up unknowingly buying it for each other for Christmas that year and now it’s a Christmastime tradition in our house to drink their amazing peppermint hot chocolate together.
(2007 flashback!)
I changed things up a bit this year though and bought the “sampler pack” that came with the peppermint hot chocolate but also included salted caramel and regular hot chocolate as well. We made the peppermint hot chocolate last night, but I’ll be sure to report back about the other two flavors if they’re as good as I hope they are!
Questions of the Morning
- If you decorate for the holidays, when do you start decorating?
- When it comes to outdoor decorations: White lights, colored lights or a combination?
I almost always wait until the day after Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas, but this year I got started quite early! I think owning a home has a lot to do with it, since I was anxious to decorate a place we actually felt was ours for the first time ever. My parents are also stopping by our house after Thanksgiving on their way home from Thanksgiving at my aunt’s and I think wanting them to arrive to a festive house also motivated me to decorate early. I think I love Christmas a little too much!
And as for outdoor lights, we’re all about the all-white lights in our house!
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-1e3-7hOJ_U8Bg.gif\")
I always start the weekend after Thanksgiving! I can’t wait!
I love the decorations. By the way- had to share the cutest video of a Vizla trying to get a tater tot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSE6I11YVsw
Beautiful decorations! I haven’t started decorating our place for Christmas yet. Do you bring Sadie when you travel?
All our decorating has been done 🙂 As far as inside lights I like white or yellow but outside I am all about the colours
I love the Christmas decorations that my mom has passed down to me, but I ALWAYS procrastinate with getting them up! This year they will likely be up the second weekend in December, but then we probably won’t take them down until February. Haha…I kid. (Hmm…maybe?)
I start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. I love it too because we go to some stores and get little gifts, get our tree and go big! I just lobe this time of year!!
I love the tree! I grew up with rainbow lights on the tree, but now my mom always puts white ones on. I don’t how I feel about it though. Haha!
We had nice weather over the weekend, so I decided to put up our decorations outside as well. I just couldn’t wait! We’ve had sn*w and it’s felt very Christmassy!
I usually decorate before Thanksgiving. We have everyone over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. I always put a paper tag on everyones plate, and they write on the tag what they are thankful for. The tag color always goes with our Christmas tree colors. As we go around the room and tell everyone what they are thankful for they hang it on our Christmas tree. Our Christmas tree always doubles as a Thankful tree also. This year is really different though. Since living overseas, no one here celebrates Thanksgiving and our Christmas tree is in storage half way around the world. http://www.eatallovertheworld.weebly.com
Oh I just love these posts:) The decorating you done is beautiful. Okay I think I might have to be ashamed to say this, but i put our tree and lights up in mid Oct, i know i know crazy:) I LOVE Christmas, I think i got a bit carried away. We only moved in to our new home start of Sept and whilst painting parts of the place I found our decorations and thought why not:) my son Reece loves it but I had to put the presents that we had under it away as he thought it was time to open them each day… !!
I usually wait until the day after Thanksgiving. This year we already have up the outdoor lights (for the first time in over a decade!!!) but I’ll do the rest on Friday! I’m so excited! (And nervous to see how my 19 month old handles decorations this year…)
As long as it is is after NOv. 11th (out of respect) I have no problem with Xmas decorating “early” .. mind you Canadian Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October so we do not do it that early.
I too normally wait until the day after Thanksgiving, but we will be out of a town a lot during this holiday season, and I wanted to get a jump start on our decorations 🙂 Love your decor!!!
Looks so cute!
Question – where did you get your couches from? They look so cozy!
Absolutely love your decorations and I love even more that you already have Christmas presents under the tree! We have to wait until Christmas Eve to put out the presents, otherwise our cat and dog get into them and there is nothing left for Christmas morning!
Since we are Canadian, we typically wait until after Remembrance Day (November 11) to start decorating, but sometimes depending on the weather, we may head out to put up our outside lights prior to then! This year, we started this past weekend (lights up on Saturday and garland around the mantel and other decorations on Sunday). We will wait until mid-December before decorating the tree as we always buy a real tree for Christmas.
My boyfriend insists that the outside lights must be white, so we do both while lights and white icicles on the house! I am trying to convince him to do red around the front door this year, where we put the garland, but we will see! 🙂
I usually start decorating December 1st, but I’m early this year too. I think it’s because it’s my first Christmas in this house, and last year I didn’t get to decorate because I had just sold my townhouse, and didn’t have a new home purchased yet! haha. Plus the weather has been fairly decent, so I wanted to get the outside decorations up when my fingers wouldn’t freeze off…and I am all about the white lights. So classic and pretty:)
I got back from my run tonight to discover that almost our whole street had decorated whilst I’d been out! We leave putting up our tree and decorations until the 24th in my family. I love the tradition of everyone coming over to stay for Christmas on Christmas eve and all the hussle and bussle of decorating the tree together and sneaking off to wrap last minute Christmas presents on the kitchen table. I can’t believe we’re only a month away now!
I usually wait until the day after Thanksgiving. I love Fall decorations, and we don’t have enough room for a Christmas tree yet, so I like to let Fall linger a little bit!
I always start decorating the day after Thanksgiving so that I can fully enjoy Thanksgiving before moving onto Christmas.
For decorations, l love the “elegant” Christmas look with white lights and blue & silver as accent colors 🙂
Well apparently I’m the Scrooge of the group. I love Christmas as much as the next guy but I have a strict rule about decorating. My decorations and tree go up December 1st and come down January 1st. Christmas has become so commercialized. It really bothers me. We’ve completely forgotten about the meaning and significance of thanksgiving in the USA. …and with that I will step down off my soapbox.
Your Christmas tree looks so pretty. We usually put ours up the weekend after Thanksgiving. 🙂
Love your decorations! We put ours up last week also because we wanted to be able to come home from our thanksgiving travels to a Christmas wonderland! No shame here! Christmas decorations make me far too happy to hold off enjoying until after Thanksgiving… Especially when there is so little time between the two holidays!
Your tree is gorgeous! We have already put up our Christmas tree and added a few ornaments to the house. Before you know it Christmas is done and dusted so I like to get the tree up early so we can enjoy it for as long as possible 🙂
LOVE the garland in your light fixture, where did you get it? Such a simple and pretty idea! Also, where is the table behind your couch from??
Thank you! It’s from Marshalls! And I got the table on Gilt.com 🙂
Ahh I love this time of year, so fun. We usually decorate right after Thanksgiving….we just moved out of state and won’t be in our house for a couple weeks, so we’ll have to wait…ugh!
We decorate the day after Thanksgiving. I like to give turkey day its due and have little turkeys and pumpkins everywhere until then. But after that, watch out! When I was growing up we had to wait until after my sister’s birthday (December 8th) to decorate so that we didn’t take away from her day. Needless to say, that tradition did not stick once I moved out!
Your tree looks SO perfect in that spot in your new house! Love it! And my tree currently has presents under it but doesn’t have decorations, so its all good! I cannot wait to hear about the other types of hot coco!
-AJ