Christmas Tour of Homes BooMama has started the tradition of a Christmas Tour of Homes for bloggers to share their favorite Christmas decorations.

My home is not nearly as elegantly decorated as my Mom’s house, but I still love having all my decorations up and enjoying the beauty of the season.

I began decorating a little late this year, so I didn’t put up as many decorations as I have. But I hope you enjoy my little tour anyway! (Some of the pictures may take a while to load… sorry! They’re big files and I just don’t have time to make them smaller right now!)

We’ll start with my family room mantle. I kept it kind of simple this year, but it still makes me happy to sit and enjoy its holiday cheer.

Here’s our tree. It’s fake, but it works for us because, well… Steve and I are lazy, and we’re fairly sure that we’d forget to water a real tree and therefore be tree-less by Christmas. A fake tree assures that this won’t happen.

One of my favorite Christmas ornaments is the wedding favor we gave to all our guests at our wedding three years ago… it’s a silver bell (we gave silver and red bells) that has a tag reading, “Thanks for ‘hanging’ with Jane & Steve! December 4, 2004.” When we buried Bismarck in our backyard this summer, we placed one of the red bell ornaments in with him.

This is a little Christmas tree I got at Target last year right after Christmas – half off! It came with red ball ornaments and white lights, and I love how it looks all lit up in my dining room window when I pull up to my house at night.

This was the view from outside our house last Thursday night, during our first snowstorm of the season.

This slate was painted last year by my hairdresser’s incredibly talented son, who is in high school. My parents gave him a picture of my house, as well as each of my siblings’ houses, and he hand painted Christmas scenes for us, depicting our homes. This is one of my favorite Christmas decorations. Check out Santa and his reindeer on my roof… I guess I’ve been “nice” this year!

My mom and I got these candy cane decorations last year at a bargain store near my house. I hung them along my stair railing, along with some festive garland.