NEW_ CHRISTMAS CLEAN & DECORATE WITH ME 2022 🎄 Christmas Decorating Ideas 2022

All right, you guys, today is the day. We are decorating for Christmas right now, today. I am so excited. We are going to run through the main living area, give everything a nice tidy and clean, and then we are going to get to decorating. I already have all of our Christmas decor pulled out, and I am so excited just to bring all of those cozy feelings in here. We are, of course, going to be doing a hot cocoa bar again, and I have some DIYs that I shared in last week's video. We just have so much to do, and I cannot wait. So let's go ahead and jump into it. ♪ Sleigh bells ringing, diamonds blinging ♪ ♪ Carols singing, table seasoning ♪ ♪ Waiting all year, making a list ♪ All right, we are getting this year's Christmas clean and decorate with me started off with a holiday simmer pot. If you guys have never done these before, they are incredible. They will seriously smell your house up so beautifully, and there really isn't an exact recipe to this at all. Just grab whatever you have in your kitchen at the moment. I am using some cranberries, an orange, an apple, some cinnamon sticks. You can even find these at Dollar Tree, and then also a splash of vanilla. Go ahead and just chop everything up, and then you're going to pour water on it until it covers everything, and then turn that on low and just let that simmer all day long. You can even use this for a few days, but it will seriously smell so good. Let me know in the comments if you guys have ever done a simmer pot before, and if so, what are your favorite mixes that you've done? Before we get into all the fun decorating, we are just going to be tidying up the main living area, and Kyle's office gets kind of tied into that because it's out in the open, and one of the things that I needed to do because it was just piling up was go ahead and shred all of our extra papers. Some things came from the mail, and some are from the boys' school, but either way, I needed to empty this basket and just get everything shredded and recycled. ♪ Last New Year's Eve, Santa always comes at night ♪ ♪ Santa always comes at night, yeah ♪ If you saw last week's video, I actually did several different Christmas DIYs, so you'll see those on the shelves. So I'm just going ahead and taking those down because I needed to actually wipe down the shelves, and then also I just left up a few random everyday decor pieces. I wasn't really sure if I was going to be using them mixed in with our Christmas decor, so I just decided to go ahead and leave them up on the shelves this last week, but now that we're ready to decorate for Christmas, I still wanted to go ahead and just take everything down and give myself a really nice, clean slate, and that also made it possible to go ahead and clean everything up. If you guys have been a part of this channel for a while, you know that every time before I decorate, I will always clean our house. I just feel like it's such an easy time to really deep clean the spaces in your home because you're taking everything down anyway, and it also helps with those chores that don't get done on a daily or weekly basis. This way, I know they're getting done at least four times a year, hopefully more, but at minimum, four times a year, everything is getting deep cleaned. This is the area that we are going to be setting up our Christmas tree, so our little palm needed to get moved to a new area, and we ended up deciding that my office would be the best spot for him. Once I got the living room all tidied up, I just moved into the kitchen, and I'm just starting to kind of clear off the countertops and organize everything in here, and before we get too far in the video, I did wanna mention there is going to be a giveaway, so I am going to be talking about that a little bit later on when we jump into all the decorating, so definitely stay tuned for that, and I also wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who clicked on this video and is just hanging out with me today. I'm so thankful you're here. Let me know in the comments if you have been here for a long time, or if you're new here, and also let me know how you found me, like what video brought you to my channel, and if you've subscribed already, what made you decide to stay? I swear, you guys, every time I unload our dishwasher and I put all the cups up in the cup cabinet, specifically mugs, that's like my little issue right now, I'm like so addicted to mugs, and I need to not bring any more into our house. I don't really know how it happens because I don't feel like I bring a lot of mugs in, and yet somehow they are multiplying, so I must be the problem here, but I really need to declutter things, but I've kind of been going back and forth. I know the holidays get really busy, and I think I could get around to decluttering maybe in the holiday season, but let me know in the comments, would you rather see like a kitchen declutter before Christmas, or would you rather wait and see that in the new year? Honestly, I have a thousand things that I could be doing instead of doing that, but I also could push that and make it happen now, and that would feel great too, so let me know kind of what your preference would be, and we'll just go from there. ♪ Christmas, oh Christmas ♪ ♪ Give it to someone to share ♪ ♪ On this holiday affair ♪ So to wipe down our counters, I am just using this fall scent from Mrs. Meyers, and it smells so good. Honestly, I feel like this is the perfect scent for like that transitional period between fall and Christmas time, or fall and winter. Now, I wanted to chat about the elephant in the room. I'm sure that a lot of you guys are waiting until Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas, and then I know a lot of you guys are on the other side, and you guys have probably already decorated for Christmas, but I personally really like to decorate a little bit early, so I typically will do that like in the beginning of November, and I do that because by the time Christmas is over, I am just feeling so overwhelmed with everything, and I just end up wanting to take everything down, like all the extra decor, and just kind of let our house breathe, and because the holidays do go by so fast, I feel like we miss out on really enjoying that Christmas decor, and so for that reason, we decide to decorate a little bit early on in the season, and be able to enjoy that decor for a little bit longer. Also, we typically don't do like a huge Thanksgiving dinner. As you may know, we don't live really close to a ton of family, and so that's just not anything we've ever been able to do, so I'm never super worried about like hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner, but speaking of Thanksgiving, let me know in the comments what you have planned. Are you doing something small? Are you hosting Thanksgiving? Are you going out of town for Thanksgiving? I would love to know what your plans are. Let me know in the comments, what do you do for your hard floors? Do you typically sweep them, or do you do what I'm doing here and just vacuum them all? I don't know if this is something that is just kind of new, because growing up, like we did not vacuum hard floors. You always just swept hard floors, and you only vacuumed carpets, but at least with like these stick vacuums, they work really well on hard floors. I honestly feel like that's kind of where they shine, and I personally feel like they do a better job than sweeping, and they also are a lot easier, so that's definitely what I go for, but let me know if you vacuum or sweep your hard floors. And depending on what you do, do you do that because that's just kind of what your habit is, like what you've always done, or do you do that because you feel like your method works way better than the other way? The last thing that I wanted to do before we jump into the best part, which is decorating, I wanted to get our floors nice and clean, and that included getting them all mopped. So my favorite way to clean my floors when I'm using a mopping bucket is actually to go ahead and pop in a dishwasher tab along with really, really hot water, like steaming water, and it cleans your floors super, super well. ♪ Ancient Yuletide carol treasure ♪ ♪ This is falala, this is falala la la la, la la la la ♪ ♪ Sing it all together for the love of me ♪ All right, all right, the house is looking amazing, it's smelling incredible because of the simmer pot we have going over there, and now we are about to pull all the Christmas decor out, start styling the shelves. I also have some really fun new things to do this year. I'm hoping they work out, and then we're also we're going to be putting our Christmas tree up. I think we're just going to put it in the same spot that we did last year, but I don't know. We'll just kind of play it by ear. Let's bring Christmas on. All right, finally, we are bringing out the decor and I've shared this story every single year, but I just cannot help but feel so grateful every time we get to decorate for a new season because as I've shared in the past, we just did not used to have any extras. And I feel like almost everybody has been in that position, whether you're starting out or, you know, whatever life kind of throws at you, you might be back in that situation. And it can be a bit of a bummer to see others decorating when you're not in that stage. And I feel like because we have been there, I am just very grateful for all the things that we do have now. And then I'm able to decorate our home with beautiful Christmas decor that we've accumulated over the years. So as a way to give back to you guys and just let you know how incredibly thankful and grateful I am for you guys that you hang out with me each week. I'm gonna go ahead and give two of you guys $50 cash to go to the store, pick out some fun Christmas decor and decorate your home with whatever you would like. And as usual, we are keeping this giveaway very, very simple. All you have to do is make sure that you are subscribed to my channel because this is a way to give back to my amazing subscribers. And then next, you're going to leave a comment on this Christmas clean and decorate with me, as well as my part two Christmas clean and decorate with me. That will be coming in two weeks and we will be going upstairs and decorating up there. And once that video is live, I will have that link down in the description box along with all of the information for this giveaway. And also I did wanna mention it is international. So no matter where you live in the world, you can definitely be eligible to win this one. So thank you so much for spending your time with me and good luck. I'm going to be linking down below my Christmas clean and decorate with me videos from previous years. So you can see like all the different ways that we've decorated. And when you watch those, or if you've already seen them, you will probably notice a lot of the same decor is being used year after year. And yet each year, it just kind of looks different. It has a different feel. And I wanted to kind of talk about that because I feel like it's so easy to want to go out to the stores and buy all new decor each year, but truly you don't need to do that and you can still have things feel different and fresh each year. So one of my biggest tips for that is to not look at pictures or videos or whatever of your home from previous years. And that way you kind of like have forgotten what things look like. And then you end up kind of decorating in a little bit different way. You end up putting your decor pieces in different areas and styling them with different items. And just those small little changes actually make a big difference in making things feel fresh and new. And it really just kind of helps you get away with styling the same decor year after year and not making it feel stale and old. ♪ I got you, I wish you were here to have you here ♪ ♪ Could sing and laugh, I can see it now, yeah ♪ ♪ Your lip stain from the wine ♪ So in last week's video, we pulled down all of our fall decor and I also shared how to make some different DIY projects. They were like little Christmas DIY decor pieces. And a few of those are starting to make it up on our shelves, including these little hand-drawn trees with the ornaments on them. These ended up being one of my favorites. I love how they turned out. And if you missed that video or you wanna see how I made those pieces, along with a few others, I will have it linked down below for you. But as always, decorating my shelves kind of gives me a hard time. I feel like I just move things around over and over until I find something that I really love. But the way that I usually will go about starting to decorate shelves is I will just start where I'm kind of more sure about something. So for example, I knew I wanted the nativity set not on the very bottom, but I wanted it like pretty low so you could see it really well. And then I also wanted it to be on the left-hand side just because that's the side you kind of see a little bit better. And so I went ahead and started there. And then on the bottom, I knew I wanted my big bowl that I could put the remotes in. And then I just kind of moved on from there. Then on the right side of the shelves, I knew the first thing that I wanted to do over there was to add my little DIY Christmas village. And these little black houses are ones that I got from Target years ago. And I've loved how they look. They're just very simple and timeless. And then I just add in a few trees in the background. And I always love how it looks. And then I just continue on with the shelves, just trying something new. But as always, don't feel like you need to get everything right the first time. Decorating is always a lot of trial and error. Something that I really like to do is add these twinkle lights in. I like to get the ones that are on a timer so that they will turn on and off. These ones are actually twinkling. I like to get them when they're on a timer. And then they'll turn on and off throughout the season, like around sunset. And then they turn off at nighttime. If you haven't done this before, you'll be amazed at what a huge difference it makes. It just brings so much light to your decor. ♪ Grab your coat, it's getting cold ♪ ♪ Just look at the falling snow ♪ ♪ They're season's greetings, happy meetings ♪ ♪ Oh, and a little bit of mistletoe ♪ ♪ They're decorating the Christmas tree ♪ ♪ With a star on top ♪ These are some more of my little DIY trees that I made last week, and I love how they turned out. And then just to kind of spice this area up or this little shelf up, I'm actually adding a little bit of greenery. And honestly, that is something that's so inexpensive, so simple to do, and it really does make a big difference in the overall feel of your space. If you feel like something's missing, add a little greenery, add a little twinkle lights, and you will be amazed at the impact. I have bought so many different twinkle lights over the years. I've got them from Target Dollar Spot, I've ordered them online, and I feel like I've finally figured out which ones I love and which ones are more of a pass for me. And these ones are definitely the top of my list. So the things that I love about them are one, they are really long, so it gives you a lot of twinkle light to work with. And then I also love that they have a remote, which makes it easy if you're putting them in higher areas or hard-to-reach areas. And they also have a timer. So for those reasons, I really, really love these twinkle lights. I just got them on Amazon, they come in a pack of four. And my tip for twinkle lights is to be sure to always take your batteries out of your twinkle lights at the end of the year so that they don't kind of slowly drain while they're just sitting in storage. But once I got all the batteries and everything, I just started picking a few different shelves that I wanted to kind of highlight, and I added those twinkle lights throughout. I got the shelves all decorated. I'm loving how they're looking, so cozy, especially with all the beautiful little twinkle lights. Now, I'm trying to maybe do something a little bit different for our stockings. There's something that I really like to do on our mantel, which kind of, I don't know. I'm going back and forth on this, you guys. Let me show you. Okay, I really love to use these little reindeer guys, like a reindeer garland thing. I actually got it from the Target Dollar Spot I believe years ago. But I love to do this right across the mantel. You see that? It's just so fun. The kids always love it, and Kyle loves it. But if I do that, then I can't hang the stockings on the mantel, and I just don't know. But see, that one looks really pretty. So last year, I hung them from below the mantel, but we used Command Strips, and then every time we had the fireplace on, it would melt the Command Strip tape, and they would start to fall, so I'm not sure. So I decided to go with the stockings on the mantel, and I just love how it looked. I was a little bit unsure when I was first starting out, because I just felt like the stocking hangers looked a little bit cheesy up there, and kind of out of place. But then I remembered that I had this little faux fur runner, and I ended up just kind of stuffing it along top of the stocking area, and it just kind of looks like a blanket of snow, and I really love how stunning it turned out. It just feels so traditional to have the stockings on the mantel, and I also kind of love that it kept them more at the center of attention versus putting them somewhere else in the room. Let me know in the comments if you do anything unique with your stockings, or if you just hang them on the mantel as well. Growing up, we always had a real tree, and then a few years after Kyle and I got married, we started getting a faux tree, and it just was amazing, honestly, because you don't have to water it all the time, it's not so much of a fire hazard, and then, honestly, having it pre-lit is just such a huge deal. So like I mentioned, we do decorate a little bit early for Christmas, but one thing that I do wait on is actually decorating our Christmas tree. So we will put it up in November, but we will not be decorating it until the weekend after Thanksgiving, and that's when we actually decorate it as a family. These are a new buy this year. They were from Walmart. They're nine-feet garlands, and they looked really pretty because they have like this cypress look, but all the ones I find online are like $70 plus. So I found this one, and it looks really, really nice, and I just think it feels so pretty to like add some greenery up above the cabinets and have some garland like that. So we are going to get to stringing the garland up here. ♪ Lean your ear this way ♪ ♪ Don't you tell a single soul what I'm about to say ♪ ♪ Christmas Eve is coming soon, now you dear old man ♪ ♪ Whisper what you'll bring to me, tell me if you can ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ I always love how everything turns out each year with Christmas. I feel like you can't really go wrong with decorating for the holidays, but one area that I always kind of struggle with is our kitchen and dining room because I'm in here all the time cooking for the family, and I really don't like to over clutter our countertop areas. And so pretty much every other year, it's just felt a little bit more bare in our kitchen. And it's like, you know, the living room is really decorated and then in our kitchen is like way more simple and not a lot going on. But this year I decided to add some garland above our cabinets and I love how it turned out. I actually got this idea from my neighbor. She did it last year and I just loved her kitchen. And I really feel like this is so nice because it ended up giving me the opportunity to decorate our kitchen and make it feel a bit more festive without having to sacrifice the functional space of my surfaces. Next we're going to do something that I'm hoping will look really cool. I kind of saw a similar thing done at the place that my sister had her reception for her wedding and I thought it would be perfect for Christmas actually. So I have just some jingle bells. These are like different shimmery ones. They were like $6 from Walmart. And then I also have some smaller sizes kind of in the same color. And we are just going to put them at different heights on the pendant. And Noah got home from school, so he's gonna be my helper. You ready? If you have little kids, you know exactly how this goes, but the kids got home from school and they wanted to help out, but they have pretty short attention spans, especially if it's not something they are totally into. But I did love that I was in the middle of kind of decorating in the dining room area and all three of the boys came up and wanted to help me. Even if it was just for a few minutes, I just really loved it. But as you kind of see this little ornament light thing coming together, let me know in the comments what you think. Or if you think I should swap out the twine for something a little bit more streamlined and see-through like fishing string, just to give it a more seamless look. I really had this going a little bit better in my mind and I kind of still love it. But later on that night, Kyle was like, oh, I really like that. And then he was like, it actually kind of reminds me of a jellyfish though. And now I just cannot stop seeing a jellyfish whenever I look at our light. So I'm kind of leaning towards changing out the twine for some fishing line, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just looking at it all wrong. Either way, let me know in the comments what you think. You love it? So usually every holiday season, I'm pulling out my new bloom towels for the season. This year, they actually got lost in the mail, but now they are reshipped and I'm just waiting on them to arrive. So even though I can't show them in this video, I am going to link them down below. Their holiday designs are so adorable. You guys will love them. So I wanted to do something a little bit different for like coffee table books for Christmas. I wanted to do Christmas books that also have like Christmas stories. So this one actually has, like you open this one up and it says, turn to page 23. That would be like a different book. So this one has a bunch of different books that are like five minute Christmas stories or something. But I thought this would be so much fun for the kids to read a book. Like we could just read every now and then. And then this one was just so pretty, Christmas on Nantucket. And it just has more like Christmas pictures in it. So it's more like a true Christmas coffee table book, but I love both of these. Well, if you can't tell, I was so incredibly stumped with the coffee table. I just could not figure out how to decorate this one. I always like to style the coffee table with a tray because I do like to keep our coffee table functional. And so I just kind of want all the decor corralled into one single area, but I just couldn't get it all styled together and looking how I wanted. So as you know, I just sat there and played with it a little bit. Finally, eventually I remembered that I had these bells that I had ordered on Amazon and I knew these were going to be the perfect piece to tie this coffee table together. And I was right. These turned out so amazing. And I love, love, love the coffee table now. And then I just ended up moving the Christmas books over to the shelving area under some trees and they looked beautiful. The last thing to do in the living room was just to go ahead and change out some of the pillows. And as you guys know, I get my pillow covers and inserts from Amazon. It's like the best place to find them. And then I also grabbed this little Christmas tree pillow from Target and I love how cute it was. Okay, we do still have just a little bit of more decor to put up like these, this little area right here. And then I also want to do garland on the stairs. But before we jump into that, I do want to get our hot cocoa bar set up. I've kind of gone back and forth on like where we want it in the kitchen, but I feel like this is the most out of the way space to kind of like sprawl it out and just make it a whole big thing. And our kids love it. I love it. Kyle loves it. It's just always such a hit in our house. So I really kind of want to make it like a big deal in the kitchen because we don't have it all year round. I love a good hot cocoa bar and my kids love it definitely even more than me because they just take every opportunity they can to enjoy it. But I wanted to show you guys and kind of talk about how with a hot cocoa bar, you really do not need to go overboard. You don't need to go buy a bunch of crazy stuff. You don't need to get like all new containers. Everything that I'm using in today's hot cocoa bar were things that I already had. Other than the little hot cocoa sign, I did find that new this year at Hobby Lobby. But all of these containers were ones that I've had in the past. And one of the containers I'm even using is literally an old pasta sauce jar, but it works incredibly. And then I'm also using some little mugs that I just pulled out of our cabinet. So you really do not need a big huge area and you really don't need a whole lot of new things. Just go ahead and start with a tray and then add in some glass containers or mugs, things like that, or in your toppings and then you're good to go. And if you wanna make it a little extra fancy, add in some of those twinkle lights, but just don't feel like you have to overdo it to make it special and absolutely perfect. All right, we had to pause for a little bit and it is pitch black outside. We actually just got the boys to sleep, but Kyle and I are going to tackle just the last few things together. So I'm gonna put up the wreath, put up a sign right here, and then go ahead and add some garland to our banister. And then I think we are going to call it a night, but I'm loving how everything turned out. And I'll show you guys in just a minute, a few pans of how it all came together. I'm pretty sure that this is actually the exact same way that I decorated this wall last year. I used the same wreath and then I also used the same sign. I think I got that from Kirkland's last year, but I just love how it looks. But once again, I just wanted to touch on this. Do not feel like you need to buy a bunch of new Christmas decor each year. Now, I feel like that advice kind of goes against the new norm of what we often see online, but you can honestly make the holidays so special without getting fancy new stuff each year. Now, I totally get wanting to add in a few new things each year just to kind of make it extra fun if the budget allows, but I would say 95% of my decor is from previous years. And I also feel like it is really neat for the kids to see old decor coming out. It's familiar to them. They remember it from previous years. And I feel like it's probably just going to signify, oh yeah, it's Christmas now, because I remember those pieces coming out like last year. Now, one example of that is when I was growing up, we used to have this like Santa and reindeer. It was a battery operated thing. It was just a tiny little trinket and it sang a little song and it moved a little bit, but I absolutely loved it. And every single time I saw my mom pull it out of the Christmas tubs, it just made me feel like, oh, Christmas is here. I am so happy. And I actually loved it so much that I literally went on eBay as an adult and I found the exact same one. And I have it in my own Christmas decor now. You guys will see that in next week's video because that little piece actually goes upstairs for the kids. But just kind of keep that in mind as you're seeing all of these things on Instagram with these like beautiful, brand new items that people are finding every single year. Just keep in mind, you really don't need that. Even though they're fun to see, that is not at all what makes the holidays special. All right, let me know what you guys think about everything. Let me know what you think of all the new things that I tried out this year, or if you have a favorite piece that I shared. And make sure that you are subscribed down below if you are not already, because next week we have our loft makeover, which is our upstairs room. We are completely making it over. You guys are definitely not going to want to miss that. It looks like a completely different room. We completely changed the function and we did it all on a budget by finding things through Facebook Marketplace. And then the following week, we're going upstairs and decorating for Christmas up there in a completely different theme. It's a lot more whimsical, a lot more fun for kids. And I just know it's going to turn out so fun. And of course, make sure that you are leaving a comment on this video so that you are entered to win. And if you are needing some more Christmas motivation, I'm going to leave my Christmas playlist right here. This is filled with all things Christmas. You have, there's holiday recipes in there, there's cleaning and decorating for the holidays. If you are needing more motivation today, I have got you covered with that playlist. As always, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I will see you right back here in the next one. Bye guys.