EVerWanderFull: DIY Christmas Card Holder & Christmas Vignette 1

Christmas is hands down my favorite holiday. As a child, I loved it because of Santa Claus, the gifts under the tree, and the yummy food. Now I love it because of all the beautiful memories I've accumulated over the years. I love it because my family always gets together; there's always conversation and laughter in the house. I love it because I get to tell my daughter all about Santa Claus; I get to snuggle up and watch holiday movies with her, and sing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town about a million and one times. I love it because my sister and I watch A Christmas Story almost 24 hrs straight. I could go on forever and ever, but there are just too many reasons it's my favorite. The most important part of Christmas to me (besides being with my family) is expressing my love to family and friends through gifts, food, and Christmas cards. I also love that people send me cards and let me know they're thinking about Eva and I. So that's the topic of today's post. How on Earth should you display your holiday cards?

I've tried several methods in the past, from standing them up on my entry table, perching them on the tree, and even taping them to the wall (this was the least successful of all). This year I thought I'd try something new. I wanted something tall that would take up some space over my shoe cabinet. Lately it seems everywhere I look dead branches are being used for some kind of decor, and I love it. So I thought to myself, hmmmm, the leaves have fallen off most of the trees outside, so why not trim some branches and see if I can use them inside?

Before I cut the branches, I did an online search for holiday tree branches and came across some great inspiration images:

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After seeing all these beautiful creations, I was sold!

I went outside and cut some branches down. I looked for some that had smaller branches that were long enough to hang the cards from. I wasn't sure how many I'd need so I cut down four pieces:

Then I picked out a tall vase from the stash I keep in a cabinet. I was initially going to use rocks to hold the branches in place, but I had a ton of red ornaments left over from last year's table centerpiece:

so I went ahead and poured them in the vase while holding the branches up:

Next I punched holes in the tops of all the cards we received and cut strips of some thin white ribbon I had left over from my sister's wedding reception favors:

I hung each card keeping in mind its size and placing them so they wouldn't cover each other up:

I was happy with the way it looked, but added in gold, red, silver, and green ornaments to make it a little more festive. Some are just strung on the branches while others were hung using ornament hooks so they'll dangle a bit:

After stepping back to admire my work, I decided it could use a bow, so I used this dark forest green ribbon that I had left from wrapping gifts, and tied it around the vase:

The vignette includes a nutcracker from the craft store that Eva painted a few weeks back:

A nutcracker my mother in law sent us a few years back:

Eva's first Christmas picture with Santa:

and this tiny tree I bought at Michael's a few weeks back on clearance:

Here are a few pictures of the entire vignette:

This morning our elf Hokie Dokie was on the shoe cabinet doing the YMCA with Eva's dolls in front of the display:

My cousin's wife sent me a picture of an elf on the shelf doing the YMCA and I promised her I would replicate it. Eva was not happy that he had messed with her dolls, lol:

Anyway, the nice thing about this display method is you can keep adding branches as you receive more cards. I know they sell branches at higher end stores, but I like free projects, so I say just go cut some from your yard. You can even spray paint them white or gray if you don't like them brown.

Now some of you might be scratching your heads right about now going, 'why in the heck would you put dead branches in your house?' I get that it's not everyone's cup o'tea so I rounded up some other inspiration pictures. I was tempted to try each one of these before I finally decided on the branches.