It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!

At least, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas inside our apartment. Outside it still looks like China. No snow, no yard ornaments, no light displays, no town square nativity scenes or Santa huts. But James and I have enjoyed making our living room look as Christmas-y as possible! And I've loved the excuse to spend some time crafting! Here are some pictures of our handiwork.

These pretty 3D stars look so beautiful hanging over our dining table.


To make this sign I cut out squares of cardboard, covered them with white paper, painted each piece red or green, and then stenciled on block letters. It turned out cute, I think.

We cut out a flurry of paper snowflakes to tape up in our front window. It's almost as cheery as the real thing!

Here is our scraggly little Christmas tree! We found it in a local market and looks so much cuter than anything we expected we'd be able to put up this year. It's fun to have a real, live Christmas tree, potted and all. As long as we don't kill it, we should be able to use it for a few years! (And aren't our lumberjack stockings cute!? Love 'em.)

These origami ornaments were slightly tedious, but they turned out great.

And these 3D paper ball ornaments really helped fill out the tree.

Our last decoration is this antique nativity scene that we purchased this summer and brought back with us. It reminds me so much of the set my mom always puts out each Christmas! I am really looking forward to using it to tell the story.

And now I just want to sing "Deck the Halls!"