Decking Our Halls

This past weekend Doug, Hermione and I got into the holiday spirit by trimming our tree, making these cookies and wrapping presents. We had a great, cozy family time and it is so sweet to see Hermione start to take part in holiday festivities. Tonight we will light our menorah, give Hermione her first little Hanukkah gift  and make these latkes. I love how we are creating and adding onto our family traditions each year. As mushy as it sounds, the holidays really are much more fun now that we have a little one to share them with. Like the rest of our home I like to keep our holiday decor simple and chic. We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas so instead of a jumbled palate of red, green, blue and white we stick to all silver, gold and white. Not only does our tree end up looking sophisticated and chic but our leftover holiday wrapping paper can be used for birthdays and other gifts as well which creates far less waste.

My little elf in her holiday polar bear pj's and angel wings. Check out Hermione's World for all the details on peanut's many holiday looks!

For our wrapping paper I sourced everything from Paper Source. My shopping list included:

Gift bags in three sizes for hard to wrap gifts

Pretty gold tissue paper

A huge roll of gold chevron wrapping paper

Fun and festive gold dot paper

And coordinating gift tags to label it all with ( here and here)

Our tree is decked in all white and silver glitter ornaments. Well, almost all white and silver...Kermit is a very special exception to the rule! Some of my favorite tree ornaments include these owls, these birds. They add a playful twist to the tree and Hermione loves pointing to them and saying "see owl!" "see bird!"

Not one for typical wreaths I love this felt wreath that we can use year after year. It hangs on the wall outside of Hermione's room and she loves saying "night night bird" to the little bird before her nap and at bedtime!

Finally, no Episcopalian/Jewish/Buddhist/Spiritual in general home would be complete without a menorah. We got this elephant menorah last year for Hermione's first Hanukkah and Hermione and I adore it! She was practicing putting the candles in (sans flames) all weekend!

However and whatever you celebrate I hope you are having a very happy holiday season!