{Home Decor} Holiday Home Tour + 2013 Christmas Card

I started decorating early this year since we hosted a big Christmas party last weekend and I didn't want to be rushed to get things done at the last minute. (Which, by the way, the party started at 7pm and at 7:05 I put the last appetizer on the table, wiped off my hands and ordered a drink from our bartender we hired for the night! Talk about best laid plans! More on that later...)

So without further ado, here's our home holiday tour, which features most of the downstairs portion of our home. I didn't decorate the bedrooms—other than mini trees in the kids' rooms, you can see photos of them decorating those at the end of this post—and there was very minimal decor in the downstairs bath, laundry room and hallway. Be sure to be on the lookout for our penguin named Herman, gifted several years back by the husband's younger brother, spurred by my husband's fascination with penguins. ;)

I love all our family ornaments we're quickly acquiring on the tree and our stockings on the staircase was the perfect solution to the fireplace mantel being out of commission this year. (You know, 40 curious fingers and all...). I got those stockings last Christmas and ended up simply ironing on monogram letters to each of them for our six-member family and they couldn't have turned out better. I was shocked at how simple and cost effective they were. Got them for $7 apiece at Hobby Lobby!

And yes, I showed you our Christmas card display in a very messy kitchen. Because that's how it looks 99.9999% of the time and you know I like to keep it real. Sometimes. ;)

It was really fun decorating this year—even if I didn't use every decoration I own—and it was even more fun to see the kids reactions to everything when they would spot something new after naps or upon waking up in the morning. Holidays really are something special with kiddos! I dream of the day they'll all come running down the stairs super early on Christmas morning to see what's under the tree. That day won't be far off!

In parting, here's a look at our Christmas card this year. I always make them on Snapfish and love the blue and white theme for 2013 and you can see the correlation between it and my current blog header. Ha!

Happy holidays to you and yours from Texas Tales!