Our Fourth Annual Christmas Decor Post

I can't believe it's already time for the annual Miller family Christmas decor post! This year looks pretty different than last year's post and those before it. It's hard to look at those past posts and our house. I find myself missing our house and Idaho when I do look at them. I loved how it looked at Christmas time. That's one of the things I miss the most about our house. BUT we are happy to be here in Ogden and setting up Christmas was a breeze this year! I think it took us about 3 hours total to get everything up and the tree decorated. We didn't even use half of our usual decor. It helps to be using the same stuff we used in Idaho. Sounds silly, but it's comforting. I'm grateful our tree made it through the move so we could use it again.

So without further delay...here's our apartment all ready for Christmas!

If you were to head over to building B in our apartment complex and look at the north side of the building you would see 6 doors and only one with a wreath on it. Easy way to find which place is ours! I hope you like hiking up to the third floor!

This is our little entry. We didn't hang up our mirror we used to have in the entry way of our house so we put the stockings on hooks behind the front door.

This is a close up of our table. I've never used these "Believe" blocks so it was fun putting up something new. I didn't bother looking at pictures from last year to see where stuff went so we just went with whatever!
(Couldn't leave out the jingle Santa on the closet door!)

This is our tree, glowing and lighting up the room. It makes me happy to see it, I just love our tree. It feels like home.

Brycen loves the tree, too. Probably a little too much sometimes.

I keep the Christmas books under the tree so he likes to sit by the tree and look at them. He especially likes this book called Little Elf.

He also likes to lie down and look up at the tree.

Tyson and I exchanged ornaments before we decorated the tree. We like to stick to something that happened in the year, so I got him a New York City TAXI ornament.

And naturally he got me an Empire State Building ornament. I love it! And I love these two ornaments to remind us of our wonderful trip to the Big Apple in May. Can't wait to go back!

We got Brycen this snowman with the bird on his nose for his ornament. We just thought he was really cute.

We decided to decorate the tree the same way we've done it in past years. Call me old fashioned, but I love the classic Christmas colors on a tree: gold, green, and red. Grandma Murri gave us the gold balls last year and we've loved them!

We also put Tyson's old ornaments he's gotten from his Grandma Clawson every year since he was born. This little sled says "Tyson 1981". It's fun to guess what year each one is from! You can tell which year the ornament styles were popular. I remember having a lot of the same kinds of ornaments on our tree growing up on Michelle St.

I love the pine cone garlands. They add a nice touch.

As I said before, Brycen likes the tree a little too much sometimes. We've had to repair a few ornaments already. Here's an illustration in photos of how it all goes down:

First, there's the general approach to the tree.
(Tyson at this point as I was taking the pictures: "Brycen...")

He knows he's not supposed to touch so he slowly reaches his fingers out to barely touch something on the tree. In this case it was a branch.
("Brycen, no no.")

Then he pulls away and giggles, knowing fully that he's not supposed to touch the tree but it's funny to do it anyway.

Then he throws his arm out and just grabs for whatever he gets his hand on. Then he pulls. If it's a ball he grabs he pulls it right of the tree and throws it on the floor (most of the time he throws it). Or he'll just pull a branch really hard, which is what he did this time.
("Brycen! No no!")
At this point he is physically pulled away from the tree and reprimanded a little more.

Then back his hand goes to the tree. But this time he looks at you with a face that says, "What are you going to do, huh? I know I'm not supposed to do this but I want to see what you'll do."
Tyson then says: "Brycen!!"

And that's a daily occurrence at our house! The little turkey. Our tree doesn't even look the way it did when we first decorated it because so many ornaments and balls have had to be moved to different spots. Silly boy!

We moved the chair to sit right next to the tree, with the table in between the chair and the couch. We put up our picture of us on our honeymoon like we've done the last couple of years. And we really wanted to put out the nativity we have from Tyson's parents that came from Germany but there was NO way we could put it somewhere without it being creamed by Brycen. So we went through our other nativities and chose the nativity Tyson's brother Dustin made us last year for Christmas. We love it and it's the perfect size.

And right behind the table on the wall sits our Santa advent calendar. Today marks the first day that it will be used this year! December 1st. This year has flown!

The ledge in our kitchen is really the only other place that we can put decor. I picked out my Santa train that I got from Thai Pan and love oh so much. I also put up that tall snowman (also from Thai Pan) and our Elf on the Shelf, Charlie, sits next to him.

Amber and Mom got us Charlie as a housewarming gift and we adopted him into our family on November 19th. We love Charlie! He's going to help Brycen be a good boy as much as Brycen will be willing to care. He'll be returning to the North Pole on Christmas Eve to tell Santa how Brycen has been. Hopefully he'll be good all month so Santa will come! :) Normally Charlie would go to a different spot every day, but Brycen loves him too much. We went a whole day with Charlie on the entry table and Brycen left him alone. It was when Charlie sat under the tree with the books and then on the entertainment center that we decided to keep him up high till Christmas Eve when he leaves. Brycen kept trying to play with him, which is a no no because his magic will go away. So he sits up higher and Brycen points him out every morning. We say, "Where's Charlie?" and he'll point to him. It will be a fun tradition for our family that I'm really excited about!

Charlie and the story book came in this nice box. We signed the back of the book and went online to officially adopt our little elf. If you want more info about adopting an elf of your own you can go here to check it out!

Our little trees that once sat on our front step in Idaho are now sitting on our balcony. We love to look for them when we're across the street at the Harrisville Walmart.

And our snowman nightlight has been so fun to have around! Brycen loves it! (And so do I, I must admit!) Those sparkles inside move around. It's a really fun nightlight. (Purchased at Kohl's, PS.)

And that's it! I hope you are all enjoying this holiday season. We love and appreciate all of you!