Christmas at our house

Holiday decorating with Flourish editor Callie Clark Miller.

~Christmas comes early to the Miller residence, particularly this year. Our former residence was just hitting the real estate market last December, and my holiday decorations were inadvertently packed off to a storage unit. So we didn't even put a tree up. This year, I was singing Jingle Bells the day after Halloween. Here's a sneak peek at some of the Miller family Christmas decorating traditions.

My granny's tree

My paternal grandmother passed away in 2008, but her influence continues strongly in my life. She collected dolls, and loved a Victorian inspired Christmas. When she passed away, I inherited a few of her treasured ornaments, and decided to dedicate a tree to them. Each year, I try to add one new Granny-inspired ornament to the tree, in her memory.

Like a kid in a candy store

I hope to eventually do an entire tree with a candy-inspired theme, but for now, I've contained my love of sweets to mason jars in the kitchen. The striped sticks are actually strawberry and apple flavored (found them at WalMart, actually.) The holiday Kisses do double duty in baking projects.

A touch of whimsy

This tree was inspired by my mother-in-law, who throws the carefully crafted sophistication of an all-white-lit tree to the wind, and opts for color, color, color. She decorated with family ornaments, and uses flashing colored lights and bubble lights on her tree. We have dubbed this our Las Vegas tree...I love the bright colors. And my kids love all the crazy lights.

How we gift

Last year, I turned the boys loose with red and green finger paint and a supply of newspaper, which I then used to wrap our Christmas presents. This year, I'm carrying our reuse and recycle theme through with branch buttons I made using broken tree limbs, instead of traditional bows and ribbon. I looked for limbs that were about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter, and used a miter saw to slice them into thin circles. A drill with a wood bit punched out my "button holes," and I used twine to attach them to our gifts.