I have never had much of an attachment to holidays. I grew up doing half-hearted celebrations for an eclectic mix of holidays, mostly all as an excuse to enjoy an excellent meal with friends and family. In fact, I generally really dislike Christmas time and the air of capitalism it always seems to bring with it along with lots of uncomfortable social obligations. This year however, I lucked out in avoiding most of the negatives around the holidays and decided to try and do a little embracing of holiday cheer to try and brighten what has been an otherwise very dark, bitterly cold last month or so.
I picked up a small indoor Christmas tree, a Norfolk Island Pine, at home depot and some cheap lights and ornaments. I've always liked to decorate Christmas trees sticking with a blue and white theme, as a nod to my Jewish heritage. To add a little more to the house besides my tiny tree, I decided to use some of my scrap paper to make a variety of paper stars to hang from the ceiling.
I chose to make 3 different varieties, more or less following some decent tutorials I found. I made a bunch of 3D spiral star/snowflakes based off a great post over at Wonderful DIY, I added some cute button accents to finish off oragami stars I made utilising the tutorial I found at Homemade Gifts Made Easy, and I made a handful of 3D stars I found on a craft blog Gathering Beauty, though ultimately found them to look less polished than the others for the amount of effort (and adhesive) required.
We have also had a small taped christmas tree outline on the wall that has stayed there now for multiple christmases, so I thouhgt I'd use some of the remaining scrap paper to string up some simple 2D star cut outs, just to bring a bit of the festive cheer into the kitchen.
Having extremely low ceilings made tacking up stars a simple task. I had some decorative string lights hanging around unused in a big tangled mess, so pulled those out to string up around the house and bring in a little holiday mood lighting. The tree ended up getting tied down to a crate to prevent our curious kitties from constantly pulling it over and I wrapped a handful of gifts to coordinate with the stars (yes, most of the gifts are for the fur kids).
Overall, I still think holiday decorating is pretty silly, but I did have fun pulling it all together, and I'm sure the decor will stay up for long enough to help keep a little cozy cheer in the house while we are forced into hibernation with the New England snow for the forseeable future.