Merry Christmas Everybody!

Doing a post about how we did the decorations for Christmas this year!  Nothing signals the start of the holiday season other than taking out box after box of decor from the storage cabinet. :)

First up, the tree. As you all know from last year, I bought the white Christmas tree of my childhood dreams but I wanted to veer away from red and blue from the previous holiday season.  Since I had a limited budget for new ornaments this year I had to resort to doing a layered tree!

I got the pink ornaments from my Mom's house since she wanted to go with the bronze and orange theme again this year.

Then of course the show cabinet is not going to be far behind.  We still picked up a lot of colors from the tree.

stuck extra santa pens together with the pink flowers in the blue vase

 I love my shiny disco balls!!!

the red bead garlands came from the tree last year

along with his and her stockings

Just in case you are wondering, how does this fair with the rest of the living room?  This is what's at the other end of the living room. Our crystal Belen (nativity scene) is at the table.

See still the same colors, blue, pink, red, silver and white.

And the same colors on the sofa tamed down by the neutral gray sofa.

I love love love this pillow. Just Php 39.75 from Uniwide!!! It gave the needed pop of holiday queer in our house.

Of course we also had a bit of Christmas outside too. I loved using Chalk Marker! Made writing on the chalk board soooo easy. A bit pricey though at 127.50 but I think you can invest in a couple of basic colors and still use regular colored chalk for the accents.  I used Uni Chalk Marker from National Bookstore.

 garland bought for Php100 at the palengke and recycled white balls from the tree last year

I took the easy route this year and used regular brown paper bags to wrap most of my gifts.  I wasn't able to buy gift wrapper at Divisoria.  These are typical called "Supot" at the palengke (market) usually at the section that sells paper cups in bulk and disposable plates and they come in different numbers (for example supot number 5, 6, 7 etc) and sizes.  I used supot number 6 this year and a bundle of 100 bags costs about Php 65! I used cut up edges from rectangular paper doilies (Php 37.50 for 100 sheets from Kyla Mae Party Needs Bacoor but they also have a branch at Divisoria) since I saw Ms. Benz of WaW and NaW use small round paper doilies for her daughter's school gifts this year.  A sheet of paper doily decorates 4 pieces of supot.

I also used washi tape to decorate bigger recycled paper bags gathered through the year and also to hold the paper doily strips in place.  I also added paper doilies to other gifts that had generic packaging just so they would look well together with other gifts and stay with the theme. :)

And then used two types of holiday washi tapes to decorate plain white boxes bought for Php 8.00 each at the local bookstore (Copenas!).  Much like how it was used in this Christmas Card.

I only wrapped the gifts for kids using free toy kingdom wrapping paper that came in with our toy sale purchases since they were in boxes or they could not fit in the brown paper bags.  So hooray for pretty but economic gift wrapping! :)

From my growing family to yours, Merry Merry Christmas!  May we all remember that Christ is the reason for the season and let us be thankful for all the gifts we receive this year, including love, health, happiness, friendship and family.