The Hardage Holiday Home

The decorations are humble and the theme (if there is one) is "Things That Make Us Smile". This is how we Hardage's decorate our home for Christmas:

I love vintage Christmas decorations. I'm always on the lookout at the local thrift shops.

One of many German ornaments my brother, David, sent to us while stationed there for several years. These are very delicate and have sweet, tiny little details that make them so fun to hang.

This is a play area for the kids. We made a rogue garland and hung lights around the shelves.

Also from Germany. Also from my brother David. This is probably my most treasured Christmas decoration. It is a nativity pyramid. It is supposed to have tiny taper candles which, when lit, make the pyramid spin.


"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care....."

The play area in the daylight. Our garland is rather sparse.

Another favorite nativity ornament.

This is our newly inherited Christmas Village. Aunt Linda passed along her collection to some *very* excited nephews and niece! We had so much fun putting it all together. Judson tells me to turn on this "Kissmas" every night. :)

An ornament from my childhood. Fun to hide a special present inside.

Dori's artwork. We have been studying the American artist/illustrator Tasha Tudor this term and I made the kids draw a picture using her "style" of making a detailed border around the main picture. Dori drew a family cutting down a tree and the children dancing with excitement.

An ornament from Jason's childhood. It is quite old and was handmade by one of his relatives.

We love candles around here...any sort of extra light, really. I caught Micah trying out the candle snuffer yesterday. It now resides out of reach.

Yet another German ornament.

Ok, this is a garland we made this week. Wow. Did you guys know how much patience is required to make real garland? Let me tell you: LOTS! I've made swags and wreaths before, but never a long garland. I discovered that these things were probably done over several evenings or days at a time in the old days before Lowe's sold them already made. You know, it was like a family project...or something. Anyway, I really wanted to try it and I looked up how to do it online and basically we spent one morning making a garland and that was our school. Dori and Micah actually really enjoyed making it and we worked on our math skills by figuring up how many bunches we would need to make to equal 12 feet and how much twine we would need to cut and how many more hours it would take at the rate of 5 feet per hour and how many more minutes Mom would remain sane if 25 mins=slightly insane. Yes, it was quite a mathematical day! It was fun. Messy--but fun. Oh, and the house smells great from it too.

Another shot of the homemade garland

And here is the tree. This year we moved it into the Den, since we don't heat the Living room and it seemed sad to look at our pretty tree through the window of the door. We are so enjoying our tree....even though I must say I had grand dreams of waiting until Christmas eve to buy a tree and have family and friends over that morning to decorate. Yeah, it was a crazy idea. An idea I hope to implement one day, but and idea that my husband nixed before I could even get the words out of my mouth! Ha!

Finally, here are our collection of Christmas storybooks. The whole wall of windows behind the tree has books on every ledge. Thrift shops are another great resource for classic and beautiful Christmas books.

Well....there you have it. The Hardage Holiday home. I hope everyone is enjoying this time of year! Love to you all!