Holiday staircase

Greetings! I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving holiday.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the Christmas season is now officially in full swing. Take a deep breath. Are you ready for it? I’m not sure if I am either, but, nevertheless, it is time to kick things off with some holiday decorating goodness.

Some of you may remember from my fall staircase post that our current house is the first home we’ve lived in with a real, honest-to-goodness staircase. Cool, huh? So I have been itchin’ to decorate it for some reason — any reason — since we moved in last January.

Well, Christmas is the MOST wonderful time of the year for decorating banisters, right? (Cue the festive holiday music.)

I started this project off with a pre-lit strand of hefty, artificial pine garland that I picked up at Gabriel Brothers (my favorite discount store in the whole world) for $25.

My handy helper (our 5-year-old daughter) helped hold the garland in place while I secured it to the oak banister with twine.

Next, I added some burlap garland (y’all know how much I love decorating with burlap) and some beautiful garland with musical notes on it.

Anyone who knows me well knows how important music is to our family. I play the guitar and sing with our church’s praise team and I also sing with a traveling contemporary Christian music group called “Fresh Fire.” Plus the hubs plays the drums and Tiny is pretty sure she can play any instrument (and tap dance like Shirley Temple).

After the garland, I added these beautiful letters that I picked up at an after-Christmas sale last year at Kohl’s. There is a letter for each member of our family, including our dog, Howie.

I added some red ornaments to give the swag a pop of color and finished off the round post with a handmade ornament I bought from our local arts council years ago.

So there you have it … an easy, elegant holiday banister vignette.

Oh. Remember back in the fall when I told you I was going to work on getting some cord organizers to corral the extension cord I use for the banister lights? Well I finally got a pack of them.

These little plastic wonders are 3M’s Command cord organizers. They come in packs of four. You attach them directly to the wall (they have a sticky back). When you want to remove them, you pull the tab on the back to release the adhesive.

These little buggers work perfectly for my staircase lights. They are fairly inconspicuous and keep the cord from becoming a tripping hazard. Lurve them.

Before I go, let me introduce you to another decoration in the hallway next to the staircase.

Isn’t he cute? Now get out there and get your holiday decorating mojo on.