We're always away for the holidays so I like to keep decorations to a minimum. Since we downsized to a downtown condo last year, our decorations are limited to kitchen/dining/living areas. No holiday decor for master and guest bedrooms or bathrooms. I personally like small items so I limited the decor to a charlie brown tree with some ostrich feathers that I thought I was going to discard (but found new use for them), and some spherical ornaments in a bowl and coffee table. random balls: I like the LED glass spheres because they look like the Amazon biospheres a couple blocks from the condo, so I might keep them on the coffee table after the holidays. :)

I have bronchitis, so am on 'light duty'. I'm sharing a pic from last year which shows the wreaths I made for my doors and windows from clearance wreaths from Joann Fabric, brass (real brass) clearance horns, ribbon that I ordered online, white pine cones from my yard, local grapevine that I wove in among the faux greenery, and I cut some faux white pine greenery from a garland and wired that in, to fill them out a bit more. Peeking out the door is Rooney on the left, and Ginger on the right; two of My3Dogs.

"Animals love them. Especially elephants and hippos" lol. yes, let me just go out in the backyard and feed them as they graze nearby! If I lived in Zimbabwe, perfect advice! Driving to the zoo is not practical. outside of that, i've never seen a hippo. or an elephant for that matter. Plenty of raccoons, opossums, squirrels, coyotes, rats and mice though. I'd toss them into the hills that surround the area. Good for mulch too. can't eat them, becuase if they've sat out for a few days, they've gone bad. find for animals, not for humans.

I ended up buying the placemats above plus napkins to match the previously purchased nutcracker placemats which will probably be gone by next Christmas. If so, the napkins will make cute guest towels. I also bought these napkins/guest towels to use with the candy cane striped runner that we did not get to use this year. Lots of cute table settings for the kiddoes!