Christmas 2016

Get ready for photo overload!  Before diving into the new year & all the fun posts that come with that, I want to recap our Christmas!

Christmas Eve started out with lots of cooking and loading up at our house and then we trekked over to my aunt & uncle's for our Mann family Christmas!

Secret Santa

Our 3rd married Christmas!

My little brother & grandfather.  Two good looking and good men!

So much love in this picture.

After lunch, gifts and visiting with my Dad's side, we headed over to Dad & Darlene's to do Christmas dinner and gifts with them.

Stockings by the new fireplace!  (They just renovated & I love how the fireplace turned out)

They crack me up.

We were so spoiled!  

We ended the night at our Christmas Eve church service which was so beautiful.   It's easy to get swept up in the commercial side of Christmas but it's so important to remember and celebrate the real reason for the season!

On Christmas morning, we woke up and exchanged stockings and spent the first part of the day cooking and enjoying the morning together.

On Christmas afternoon, we went to my grandparents to eat dinner and exchange gifts with them.  These three guys make my heart happy!

Delicious dinner!

Love these 4 so much!

Christmas 2016 was a great one!!   I do not take for granted how lucky I am to have these amazing people in my life.  Hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with your family!

Opryland Christmas

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is our annual trip to Opryland!  This year we were under some time constraints due to work, our trip to Texas etc. so we reduced our trip from a long weekend to one night.  We will definitely be going for a longer trip again next year but it was nice to sneak away for a night and enjoy all the Christmas fun!

We left after I got off work that Monday and drove straight to Nashville for dinner.  Sadly, one of our favorite places turned out to be a terrible meal but we were still excited to move on to checking out the Christmas décor!

I love this Nativity outside of the hotel.  It's so beautiful and I love standing there and listening to the Christmas story.

It was a cold but beautiful night outside checking out the lights!

Huge & gorgeous tree inside the hotel.  There are trees everywhere and decorations throughout all the atriums and along the riverboat ride inside.  We love walking around and looking at it all!

Christmas fun with this guy is always my favorite :)

The next morning we grabbed breakfast & headed to ICE!  This year's theme was Rudolph and it did not disappoint.

It always amazes me what they can carve out of ice and I love walking through and reading the stories and seeing the ICE décor to match each part.

Every year, this Nativity scene is at the end and each ICE figurine lights up during their corresponding part of the Christmas story and it is so beautiful. 

After ICE, we did a little shopping and headed home.  It was a quick trip down and back but we were able to do our two favorite activities and spend some much needed time away together.  If you get a chance, I highly recommend a Christmas visit to the Gaylord Opryland.  It is so gorgeous and you can spend hours just walking around the hotel!

We are already planning & looking forward to our trip next year!

Christmas Home Tour

I love our house year round but when it's decorated for Christmas is my favorite!!  The trees, lights and décor just add so much warmth and happiness.  We try to collect new décor pieces and decorations each year to add to our collection so each year Christmas in our house gets bigger!  I always go out the day after Christmas to snag great deals on things for next year so I can't wait to see what I come home with this year!

Our fireplace.  The advent calendar, joy sign and basket were new additions this year and I love them!! We need to add gas logs back into our fireplace but just haven't gotten it done yet so in the meantime these decorations fill it up nicely!! Once it's empty again, we'll hopefully finally get the logs put in!

Our main tree in the living room.  This year, we just used our ornaments we have purchased since we've been together on this tree.

Nighttime view.

Love sitting on our couch and seeing this view!  Tip: we purchased a photo album and put pictures of each ornament we purchase in it and write beside it where we bought it, what it represents, etc.  You think you'll always remember that stuff but you won't!

I added a few decorations to our shelves this year and hope to find more things to use next year!

I found these snowflake pillows the day after Christmas last year & love them!!  Also, please ignore the crookedness of our gallery wall.  I need to put the sticky things on the back of the frames so they won't move. 

Our second tree in our other living room.  We bought this tree after Christmas last year and used it to display all of our childhood ornaments that our families have given us so far.  One day, if we have kids I'll add another tree for all of their ornaments.  Basically my future dream house has like 15 trees in it.  #dontjudgeme

My grandparents gave me their piano a few weeks ago and I love it!  Jared had a great idea to do a mini Christmas village on the top of it and I think it looks great so far!  We're going to try and add a few more pieces for next year but I really like how it adds something to this area of the sitting room.

Dining room table!

Kitchen decorations!

There's even a little touch of Christmas in the bathroom :)

Firefighter tree in our office!

Guest room décor.

Master Bedroom.  I love that light up tree & you can see in the background, we added large plaid pillows to our bed to add more décor to this room.  There are Christmas sheets on the bed in here too.  I LOVE Christmas sheets but we can't handle flannel so I was tickled to find Martha Stewart cotton Christmas sheets last year!

That's our Christmas home tour!! I just love everything and can't wait to see how much better it looks next year too :)  I cannot believe there are 10 days until Christmas!!!!  I'll be soaking up this view for the next 10 days because we're definitely tree comes down right after Christmas people.