Oh the holidays! It's my favorite time of the year. I can hardly wait to put out that first pumpkin once mid-September rolls around. Halloween comes and goes and the preparation for Thanksgiving begins. But my all time favorite is by far Christmas! It's always been my general rule of thumb to refrain from putting out Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. This year was no different, but I'll admit I was itching to get to it, especially since this was our first year in our new home for the holidays and I had some major planning to do!

You see, I had a "system" at our old house; a plan in place of just how to decorate our house for each holiday. But this year I had a blank canvas and no plan. There was some trial and error until I was pleased with the end result, but it's still a work in progress. I already have bigger plans for next Christmas!

The first dilemma was a Christmas tree. We had pitched our old one prior to the move so we needed a new one...a GRAND one for our 2-story family room. And so the hunt began with the mindset of the bigger, the better! We settled on a 12 ft. tree and boy is it BIG! Perhaps even a little too big...at least diameter wise, but I still love it and was excited to keep all the decorations in our family room on the neutral and rustic side.

I bought new stockings (with fur!) for our mantle and used predominantly white ornaments on the tree. The Christmas "color" would come in other rooms in the house; a little red and green in the kitchen, green and gold in the dining room and blues, magenta and purples in our front "lounge" room. The office would be decked out with green and burgundy and the powder bathroom with copper and brown.

Creating little vignettes throughout the house with my collection of Santas and snow men is always fun and this year was no different. Vignettes are an easy way to give your home a welcoming and polished feel, be it during the holidays or any time of the year. My corner kitchen window provided the perfect place to group my rustic Santa and reindeer, as did my foyer entry table.

But the real magic happens at night when the Christmas lights illuminate the house, both inside and out! The only drawback is how dark the house feels after Christmas when all the lights come down!

What's your favorite part of the holidays?

gdg4rusticbarn