Christmas Mugs and Glad Tidings

In a season filled with grandiose gestures, lavish decorations, and heirlooms and traditions, sometimes it’s nice to take a step back and enjoy the smaller tokens of the season. The alternative title to this post could have been: ” The Little Things: Christmas Edition” because I thought it’d be nice to focus on some of the simple things that have been bringing us joy during the hustle and bustle of every other part of the season. So, let’s take a walk, shall we? Let me guide you first into the kitchen because we’ve changed a few things around in the spirit of Yuletide cheer…

Usually, we house our every day mugs and a few frames here, but it’s really fun to break out the red, white, and green for the holidays. Simple and easy, not much preparation apart from an initial wash to get the dust out, but these cuties bring so much happy to our kitchen.

I filled our gold-rimmed glass (thank you, Dollar Tree!) with some silver, red, and gold straws, kept the gold candlesticks, and added a few sparkly snowflakes… and that’s it!

It might be the most festive wall in our whole house. 🙂

Okay, onto the “glad tidings” portion of the title. If you follow us on Instagram, you saw that we’re knee deep in getting our Christmas cards out for the year…

This is our first year doing them, and it’s partly fun and partly stressful. But mostly fun. 🙂 Here are a few things I’ve learned about Christmas card sending thus far:

1.  Start earlier. Like right after Thanksgiving (or maybe even before). As much as I hate to jump the gun on Christmas, starting earlier will take one more item off the Christmas To-Do List and maybe even make the process more enjoyable.
2. Make a spreadsheet. As this is our first time at bat, we didn’t have a list from who we sent to prior years, addresses, etc. This year, we’ll make one for next. 🙂
3. Write and watch. Christmas cards are way more fun to do when you’re watching a Christmas movie or listening to Christmas music.

Back to the simple things house tour. Remember our side table with the snowflake lamp?

Well, we’ve added.

I wanted a way to collect and display all of the Christmas cards that show up in our mailbox and enjoy them throughout the season. We’ve never really been tape-all-the-cards-to-the-walls-or-doors people and even if we wanted to, we don’t have the space. BUT, it is nice to have a place to put them so that we can look at them and read them. This was something that I saw on Pinterest and decided to tweak to fit our space. First, I grabbed a galvanized container that I had lying around, a chalkboard tag (similar to, but larger than the ones from this post) from Michaels and a hot glue gun.

I think you can deduce how it went down from there- glue it on, write a message of your choice in white chalk, and start collecting!

It’s a simple, but fun way to enjoy the messages from our friends and family throughout the season. I’ve even found myself sitting next to the tree with the fireplace on re-reading cards and notes that we’ve gotten. I’ve never done that before because they usually get looked at once before making their way to the recycling. This is waaaay more fun and festive if you ask me. 🙂

So what little things have you been delighting in this season? Do your mugs and Christmas cards have a special place during the holiday?