Filling our home with winter whites and fresh greens

It's been a few years since I've felt up to decorating for Christmas. Usually, Hubby gets out a few select decorations from the attic that will add some festive feeling to our little home but won't require a lot of clean-up once the holiday season is over.

This year I'm feeling peppy and also inspired by some of the ideas I've found on Pinterest. I discovered that every time I saw a photo of Christmas decorations with live mini trees and fresh greens, I was pinning it to either my December board or my Pale Pretty Christmas board. I was particularly inspired by a photo from A Cottage Nest (click here to see it).

I finally asked Hubby if we could depart from getting out the same-old-same-old from the attic and do something different based on what I'd been liking. He was totally up for it.

In fact, it was on Hubby's suggestion that we spend our Friday night date night (the last day of November) hunting for exactly what we needed, so I could decorate on Saturday. I'm telling you, I'm married to a total sweetie!

We hit several stores on Friday evening (I'm a power shopper that gets in, looks, and gets out rather quickly from a store). We were really happy that we were able to find all the sweet little trees at super low prices as well as five of the seven containers we needed at discount stores (two we already had). We even found a beautiful new mirror at an unbelievably low price and then got an additional 20% off because it was dinged a bit on the corner. Sweet!

On Saturday, we hung the mirror over the mantle first (I measured and Hubby set the anchors). Then we headed out to find the last few little items we needed including greens, a bag of cinnamon-scented pinecones and a set of sparkly silver LED candles (an open flame would be a fire hazard among the trees).

We picked up the fresh greens at a local tree lot that had extra branches from trimming the trees they had sold. Once we got them home, I wired together the larger boughs to create the garland for the hearth and a swag for the front door. I used the smaller sprigs to tuck around and between the tree containers on the mantle.

The cats were loving all the fresh greens. I let them sniff, chew, and lick the boughs before I started constructing anything with them (yes, Dexter licks evergreens--even fake ones). Lucy went nuts for the bag of cinnamon pinecones and rubbed all over it like it was catnip. She didn't give up her claim to the pinecones for quite some time. She finally got bored and wandered off after a while so I was able to place the pinecones last. I left some down low for them to sniff and enjoy.

The cats don't climb up on the mantle, so we can have these Christmas trees without incident. This is a wonderful alternative to having a cat in the Christmas tree multiple times a day from now until New Year's Day. We get the wonderful smell of Christmas in our home without the hassle of having to redecorate the tree every morning after a night of feline fun with the enticing baubles and sparklies they can't leave alone.

Now it really and truly looks and smells like Christmas here in our little home! It's been great starting out December like this.

Trees from largest to smallest:

"Dwarf Alberta Spruce" (Picea glauca 'Conica')

"Ellwood Cypress" (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Ellwoodii')

"European Tree" (also marked Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Ellwoodii' 

but looking very different than the taller cypress)

Center "tree" is a rosemary plant cut like a Christmas tree