Decorating my Tiny House for Christmas with Thrift Finds and Homemade DIY's

This will be our second winter and holiday season that we have spent in our little home that we built here in the mountains. Even before moving into a tiny home, I loved the idea of celebrating holidays in very simple ways. I don't like to store a lot of things, especially living in a very small home, so I am going to be sharing some of the ways that we welcome and celebrate the beauty of this season with some simple DIYs. Today I went for a hike in the woods behind our house to forage for some fresh greens to have around the house during this winter season, so I found some sprigs of fresh greenery that I'm going to add to a vase. I'm still undetermined on getting a Christmas tree or not this year, so this might be our little mini tree. The whole world is white, there's snow everywhere from the storm last night. Winter is here, blue jays are watching the children's play on this bright and wonderful Christmas... This morning I am making some hand-dipped beeswax candles. I like to do this every so often whenever I run low on stock and it's just a simple activity I really enjoy, especially around the holiday season. I love having all-natural beeswax candles on hand and I burn them quite frequently, so it was time for a good restock and this feels very timely for a good seasonal DIY. This time of year can feel very full, very busy, and all wonderful things. One of my friends was sharing this week how the season of Advent has traditionally been the season of expectation and even fasting, this practice of entering into saying no to things that we might normally say yes to, all good things, but just creating this sense of belonging, this desire to be filled. She shared some ways that she is practicing this. It inspired me to find some small ways to enter into this season of Advent with expectation and openness in order to be filled by Christ. This season I'm going very simple with our holiday decor. I'm just starting by making a paper garland. I picked up a booklet of cardstock from Hobby Lobby. They had a fun assortment of different holiday colored and themed papers and so I'm just creating a simple garland to pair with some greenery. It's a very cozy morning this morning because we are all fogged in. Mornings like this the fog rolls up and then as the day starts getting warmer the clouds will lift and it rolls over the hills. Very magical, like watching the weather system change around you, but right now we're just in a little weather hole here with the fog so I think I'm going to do some things around the home this morning while I'm kind of socked in and then as the clouds lift I'll probably go out for a hike or walk or something, but it's a very cozy morning. Paper chain is done. I would have liked to do maybe some more green but I didn't find a pack of paper that had more green so this will work. It has a lot of blue so I think it'll flow well into winter if I want to keep it up for the winter. But yeah this is really fun and I wanted to pair it with some garland. So I found this garland for $25 a piece at Hobby Lobby and it's actually very realistic looking. I'm super happy with it. It was 50% off and I just think it looks super natural. I love the look of garland and it's one of those things I can't go out and forge because the needles are going to die very quickly and then it will just be non-existent. So this was worth it for $25 a piece. I decided to go ahead and put it above the kitchen window here to frame this out. This is the pot that I picked up at the thrift store this week. It was $1.99 and very close to my inspo photo. I love the texture on this ceramic vase. I feel like it is just a really fun piece. I'm just going to create a simple arrangement in the pot for on our dining table. I'm just adding the greenery that I forged in the woods earlier this week and then I'm also going to add in a couple of stems that I found at the thrift store. These are some stems that I thrifted. They are faux stems but I found them at the thrift store. They were $1.99 a stem and they're originally they had the tag still new from Target and I thought they looked very realistic. So I grabbed I think there's six of these and I thought about just mixing these in with the other greenery. Next I want to make some homemade marshmallows. I feel like a really fun way to just enjoy the beauty of each season is baking something seasonal and it doesn't always have to be buying something or decorating something but sometimes it's just as simple as like the act of doing something being able to engage with it with your hands and create something beautiful and that feels very timely for the season. I've really been wanting to make some homemade marshmallows. I usually do this every winter around this time. I make them with maple syrup and gelatin and water. Very simple recipe but I want to make a batch of these because I've been making kind of a hot cocoa protein smoothie lately and I feel like these would be really good on it. I love swapping out bedding because it's a really simple swap to be able to incorporate the mood and feeling of the season the seasonal colors without having to necessarily accumulate more things. Today I swapped out our blue gingham sheets for this beautiful rich green color. You probably know I'm a huge fan of cotton and linen, just natural fibers, so I love having natural fibers to sleep on especially and these sheets are from Bedsure. They are 100% organic cotton. I'm really grateful to be able to partner with brands who provide quality products so a big thank you to Bedsure for sponsoring today's video. Organic cotton makes up 0.04% of the world's cotton supply and Bedsure's gentle and soft line of bedding comes in 100% organic cotton made with no pesticides, GMOs, or harmful chemicals. They're soft and breathable with a 300 TC weave fabric and this color just feels like Christmas and feels like the forest so it's very cozy. It's super soft and would also be a great thoughtful gift for this Christmas if you are giving gifts in your family. We love having natural fibers not just to wear on our clothes but also to sleep on in our bedding at night so I love that Bedsure has this line of 100% organic cotton bed sheets. They come pre-washed so they're already soft. If you want to check out any of their products I will leave a link in the description below. Now this space is feeling so much more cozy, very fitting for the Christmas season so I love it and thanks again to Bedsure for partnering with me in today's video. I have two more things that I want to swap around in here to decorate the space, finish getting it feeling a little bit more seasonal. I took down our artwork and I had some floral prints up and just some landscapes and I decided to swap them for something more seasonal so I have this print. I just printed off new prints at Walgreens so that I could swap it out and have it feel a little bit more cozy for the winter. This frame was from Goodwill for $4.99 and I ended up just adding a print that I already had because it felt kind of seasonal with the blues and it's a very subtle nod to winter so I'm gonna add that one. I'll probably add these two to the living room and then I also ordered this larger print for the kitchen. I already had this frame. This one was also from Goodwill for $4.99 and then I just added a new print to here and I'll hang this above our shelf in the kitchen. I feel like this is a really easy way to help it feel more seasonal but still not really adding more things into a house. Great for a tiny house because we don't have room for a lot of extra decor but I do like it to feel a bit more cozy and for the season so this will be nice. I feel like it'll just add another element of that coziness for winter. I didn't have enough to make three because I decided to make like a really big one because our kitchen window is so big so I'll just keep collecting toilet paper rolls and then probably make two more but I just I don't even know if you can see this. It's really hard to see. The garland is missing because it did fall down. It got really hot in here this week and so I think the command strips just heated up too much and it fell so I ended up actually moving it above the loft or like on the pony wall up there and I actually like it. I'm gonna leave it there so we'll see. I'm gonna hang some roman shades in here so I think it'll balance out with the height up above but yeah that's what happened to the garland. I need to find a new place for the paper chain. Yesterday I was at the thrift store and I actually found a little tree that I thought about trying in here. I have never owned a fake tree. I've never bought a fake tree before so this is a first for me but it was on sale and it's a really nice quality faux tree so I thought about trying it in here. I don't know if it's going to feel a little bit too claustrophobic. I had to rearrange some stuff. I tried it in a bunch of different spots per usual but I think I've settled on trying it in between the couches but I did swap the ottoman here for over there and then put this couch in here because it was feeling a little bit too claustrophobic and the ottoman is slightly smaller so it gives the illusion that it's the same pieces but it's actually slightly smaller. I definitely spoke too soon about the garland because I ended up moving it again to above the Christmas tree and I didn't end up liking that so I actually moved it above the door and hopefully this is its final resting place. As I've been decorating this week I've been reflecting on when we first moved into our house last year the same time of year around Christmas and we had a little tiny baby tree. It was a live tree and it sat on top of our fireplace and a little string of oranges and that was all of our Christmas decor but it was just so exciting to finally be in the home that we had built. It was so surreal and now a full year later it feels even more cozy. We feel very settled and this space is definitely home for us and it's just been really fun to decorate it this time around. It feels like I know it's nothing extraordinary but it feels like a lot for me and for us. It's just really fun to have a little tree in here and find ways to decorate it. I have some extra frames that I've just had around the house that I've been collecting and so I wanted to put these up on the other side of the tree just to kind of create and frame out the tree and create a cozy little nook in here and then one of the other things one of the final things I want to do for decorating is just adding this string of polaroids and I also added some clips so that I could swap these out. I need to dig out our Christmas cards that people have given us kind of have them like buried in different places in the house so I'll dig those out and then clip them onto here and it's just kind of a fun way to be able to enjoy those personal photos and see them as long as my husband doesn't clip his head walking through into our living room so we'll see how that how this string of photos survives there or not but this was kind of the final look at the space. It feels so much more cozy. Thank you for joining me in my home this week as I prepared for this Christmas and winter season. I hope that you all have a wonderful week and a Merry Christmas and I'll see you next time!