The Original Because of Love

Hello everyone, welcome to our house. First, let me introduce myself. My name is Stephanie. My wonderful husband is named Josh. Our precious 20 month old little girl is named Alyse. We live in the Charlotte, NC area.

Ok, now that intros are out of the way...here are the decorations!

Welcome - When you walk in our front door, there are two tall vases filled with ornaments with a big silver bow on the top. There is one on each side of the front door. (I just made them this year. I really like them!)


This is our hall tree that sits in the front hallway. This is our first miniature tree. (If you count there are 8 trees in the house. 5 of them are 6ft or more. Three of them are 3 to 4 foot mini trees.) This first one is decorated with 12 Days of Christmas of ornaments.

Dinning Room - The "Gift Room". The tree is decorated with foil wrapped gift boxes. There are also gift boxes under the tree. The table has place mats with gifts on them and also has scattered miniature foil wrapped gift boxes. In the background you can see another gift box display.


Guest room - This is a "Rustic Christmas". This miniature tree has holly berries, gold swirls, and a "Merry Christmas" ribbon wrapped around it. The quilt has snowmen, mittens, wreaths, trees, and snowflakes on it.

Guest Bathroom - Yes, our guest bathroom is decorated with snowmen and snowflakes on a light blue background.


Alyse's Room - "Little Girl" Christmas. This is Alyse's tree that has a pink and purple theme. There are clear beads and pink sparkly bows on it. Under the tree is some Christmas Pooh Bears and our collection of the singing snowmen from Hallmark. (My Dad gets them for me every year and Alyse loves them.) She also has her "socks" hanging from her bed, and her Baby's First Christmas stocking from last year.



Family Room - "Polka Dot" Christmas. This room is the main room of our house. First is the sofa table that has Santa's plate for cookies.

Here is another mini tree. (This one is a real tree). This picture shows the ribbon that I used in this room. I cut strips of 3 kids of ribbon (White with green and red polka dots, plain sheer red, and red with white polka dots) and I tied them onto the branches of the trees and garland in this room. I saw this at a Christmas show and decided to give it a try. It turned out really pretty.

The next tree is our big Christmas Tree (I think it is 10 feet.) All the ornaments are red and white. My favorite ones are either the red with white polka dots or the red ones with a black Santa belt.

I picked this picture because it kind of shows how all the lights glow at night. I never turn on any lights in our house but the Christmas lights because it is so pretty. I love it!

Here is our pretty mantle.

Kitchen - This room doesn't really have a theme. It is just a collection of Christmasy stuff. The tree in this room is our "Family Tree".

It is the only tree with colored lights and has all of the ornaments that we have collected from our childhood, from our travels, and gifts that have been given to us. In the picture you can see a snowman police man, a "31" stocking - which is from when Josh played basketball at IWU (our college), one of our Elevation ornaments, the ornament we got in the Bahamas this year, a Baby's First Christmas ornament, and our wedding Mickey and Minnie ears that we got at Disney World on our honeymoon.

Master Bedroom - "Blue and White Snowflakes" The last tree is in Josh and my room. Our bedroom is all light and navy blue, so the theme in there is blue with snowflakes.

If you really know me, you know that this is really a small part of my collection. I could go on and on with little things here and there that I love, but that would take forever! If you would like to look around on my other post, I am sure you will find some other decorations. There also may be some refreshments found too. Hope you enjoyed a glimpse into our little "Christmas Wonderland".

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. May God bless you!

*To my regular blog readers - Yes, I know that you have seen this already, but I really wanted to participate in this tour of homes. Hope you don't mind.