Marvelous Mondays | Apartment Christmas Cheer

On this Monday the thing I find to be most marvelous, as I sit and work on lots of editing from home, is, in fact, my surroundings. I love Christmas, especially decorating for it, and I'm quite happy with how things turned out this year.

Now, as a disclaimer, it IS just a tiny apartment and I DID try to decorate with things we already had. So, it's by no means super glamorous or worthy of a design blog, or perhaps even Pinterest. But it's my little home, and it's the second Christmas I get to spend with the love of my life. So, it warms my heart and I really enjoyed working with what we had to make it as festive as possible! Thus, I thought that made it worthy enough to feature for today's post.

I thought I would do a little compare/contrast with how it looked last year, so we'll go "room by room" (even though there's only two rooms ;) from last year to this year.

Last year's dining room:

And this year's:

I got a little more creative with the centerpiece and, as you can tell, we have things hanging on the wall this year that we didn't last year, since we had only been married for a little over a month at that point.

We got these fabulous candlesticks for our wedding - and they were originally perfectly shined silver. But, over this past year they tarnished and I decided to leave them that way because they look more gold, which matches the ornaments better, and more vintage. :)

(Hey look, it's me!)

Last year's Christmas tree:

This year, we just did a little table-top one (which will be explained in a moment):

The miniature ornaments were ones my siblings and I grew up with, from an advent calendar, that I borrowed from my Mom, the red beads are 3 necklaces that I had, and the "topper" is a ring of mine. Hah. I was proud of myself for being able to decorate it with stuff I already had. :)

Last year's living room:

This year we have a bookshelf, and thus lost our great Christmas tree spot. :-/

I love these vintage design postcards I bought from Bygone's Vintage Boutique here in Richmond and just had to incorporate them, somehow.

Since we don't have a big tree, I hung ornaments from all the windows:

I new favorite given to me by one of my amazing clients this year! We're hoping it gives Aaron the hint to get me the REAL thing.... ;)

I also blinged up our coffee table center piece:

And the top of our kitchen cabinets:

Annnd I made a wreath to add a little cheer to our not-so-pretty apartment door:

So there you have it! The Christmasized Watson apartment of 2011. :) It brings me great happiness, and I hope you enjoyed it, too. How did each of YOU decorate this Christmas?