Holy Christmas

Holy Christmas my dudes. I love/hate Christmas. I like fires, and snacks, and friends, and giving gifts, and getting gifts, train sets, eggnog, skating, and a bunch of other Christmas related things. What I do not love is spending tons of money on garbage I will immediately throw out or I don't love.
And I hate inflatable Christmas decorations almost as much as I hate potatoes,  aka the worlds grossest food. I'm sure we've all heard people bemoaning the commercialism of Christmas and blah blah blah, so you don't need to hear me say it. This year I'm doing our second year of Christmas together as a married partnership (I have a big crush on Josh) and I want to do it well. Not neglecting my values just because it's Christmas and all the stores are screaming CONSUME! CONSUME! CONSUME! How do I balance this? My first problem was decorations, which I will cover in this post and I'll write more about Christmas related things in later posts.

Christmas is coming like a train on fire. Or something else that going real fast and is very expensive. I find this season overwhelming in almost every way. But it still retains the magic and beauty I felt growing up. This time I just have to pay for it myself. I've been looking for ornaments and decorations that are beautiful, inexpensive, and create the least amount of waste. Different places say different things, but the amount of waste created around the holidays is exponential when compared with the rest of the year. Gift wrapping, packaging materials, and food waste all add to the dumpster fire that is the earth on Christmas. This year Josh and I have our own home and its large enough to have our own tree. Our apartment was so small that the tree would have taken over the entire space. So we avoided the problem of having to decide what kind of tree to get and how to decorate by just not doing any of it. It saved money, time, and annoyance in the tiny space. But I missed the coziness of Christmas.

Now we live in a 100 year old home with plenty of space in the living room for a tree and plenty of halls to deck. Josh and I both have some ornaments from our childhoods so we weren't desperate for any new ones. I wanted to see if I could find some cheap and nice ones to fill in the tree. First stop was the red apple in Blairmore. But everything was a mix of three things, ugly, expensive, with SO MUCH packaging, or poorly made.

So I decided it would be much better if I just made my own. I love the look of porcelain and clay ornaments, as I didn't have either of those materials I went to Pinterest. I had a couple requirements, I had to already own all the material that I needed to make the ornaments and it had to be inexpensive.

After only a little bit of searching I found a recipe for salt dough ornaments. This is an example of a recipe. I followed one very similar but I can't find exactly the one.

I already had flour, salt, and water. I also had paint and yarn to finish the ornaments. I love the feeling of creating my own ornaments, and as Josh said, "It's so easy a kindergartener can do it." I made them all and painted them all in a day and it wasn't frustrating or over ambitious. I had a little ball of left over dough that poked a hole in and I am using it to hold some of my incense. So I didn't waste any of the dough.

Soon Josh and I will head into the woods to find our tree and when we do I'll post pictures of it all decorated!

Beyond this I plan on using as many natural materials and things I already own or can make to decorate the rest of the house, alternatively I can also purchase things second hand at thrift stores and on the local buy and sell page. I'm excited to see what Christmas looks like at the Cassley Schulz house this year! I want to be minimal and cozy, beautiful and cheap. So we'll see what I can create!