happy at home

It's christmas eve, and I'm sitting in our house. It's been nearly two months since we spent our first night here, so we're feeling very settled. I still get these moments where I think WOW, we did it! We have a house! And christmas eve is certainly a night where that really hits home. Our house is so cozy and pretty right now. It smells like oranges, cranberries, and cinnamon from the pot I have had bubbling on the stove to make the house smell nice. It smells like chocolate cake from the dessert I made for christmas dinner tomorrow. It's lit up enough from white christmas lights alone. I thought I would put together some pictures of our decorations from this year. I'm sure I will love looking back at them, the pictures from our first christmas. And while it may be our first christmas here, I figured out earlier that this is our little house's 71st christmas!
Tonight we made a last minute trip to Target for baking materials, and then went and got dinner from a Thai restaurant nearby. When we got home, I did some baking for tomorrow-the cake mentioned above, plus I put together baked french toast for the morning. I follow The Pioneer Woman's recipe and it's perfect because it goes straight in the over in the morning-no work involved! After I did my baking and breakfast prep, I put out luminaries on our walk way. When I was a little girl I always loved luminaries. Now I have my own house to put them out at! I used clear mason jars and little tea lights. Plus we got some snow tonight! Our snowy yard and mason jar luminaries are just too much, I could look at these pictures all night!

Once they were outside and lit, Will and I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for the first time. This night pretty much could not have been better. I am feeling happy, happy, happy to be home!

these lights around the garage window ended up being one of my favorite parts of our outdoor decorations!