Haul Out The Holly

We decorated for Christmas today!  I love this time of year. Deborah and I spent all of Elf and most of While While You Were Sleeping putting up the tree, stringing the lights, and adding a million ornaments. 

 I really love decorating with Christmas colors- I think other tree schemes (blue and sliver, purple, pink, etc.) are pretty, but there's something fun about getting to cover everything in the green and red. I mean, they are Christmas colors, right? It just so happened that our tree had mostly red and gold ornaments, and it turned out beautiful. 


We chatted about how much fun it is to pull out the ornaments from when you were a kid and reconnect with your past. The bear ornament was one I "made" in preschool (although I doubt there was a lot of making involved on my part) and the heart is from my show choir director in high school. Oh. yeah. show choir.

All the collection of ornaments weaves together the story of 3 amazing girls. 


The tree looked beautiful from outside. I wish this picture could do it justice. I'm hoping Santa will bring me a dSLR for Christmas now that I'm getting more and more into photography, but we'll have to see. In the mean time, use the pictures as a frame of reference and leave the rest to your imagination. ;)

We don't have a mantle for our fireplace, so we can't hang our stockings by the chimney with care, but we did hang them up as best we could. We never did stockings growing up, so I've never had one to open. Maybe this will be the first year???

We also put my mini tree that I have used in the apartment for the last several years up in the kitchen. Again, red and green (and gold)!



























I love Nativities, and I've had this one for about ten years or so. When I was in high school and college, I would put it up on my nightstand. This year I put it on display in front of the garland in our library! 

Now that the decorations are up, I can't wait to start celebrating Advent on Sunday. I'm sure there will be lots of blogging about that in the days to come, as it is absolutely my favorite favorite holiday. <3 Can't wait!