It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Our decorations are up!

I'm definitely one of those people that think that you should celebrate one holiday at a time, and the thought of stores preparing for Christmas before we've even cooked the turkey gives me hives.  While I usually ease into the decorating, our December is jam packed, so the day after Thanksgiving we dusted off the decoration bins and got to work.

Last year I bought new ornaments after the holidays at Target for a couple bucks a box along with some silver ribbon and after packing them away and forgetting about them for a year, it was like Christmas morning opening them up to see what I had bought.  I was really glad to see I kept it simple with silver and gold.

I chose the corner with the small table next to the front door to put the tree.  You'll probably think I'm crazy, but last year we actually did it on the other side and blocked the front door.  I think the only reason we did that was because the outlet is on a switch, so our lazy butts didn't have to plug and unplug the lights every night.


The first step was to move the table and ottoman to the other side of the wall, and this move only reinforces my idea of a small bookshelf or piece for that space. 

I put up the pre-lit tree in record time, then waited an hour for Mike to come help me find the one cord and plug that wasn't connected and then proceeded to smack my head as we found it in about 5 minutes.

I added the ribbon and the ornaments and then ran drove the hour and a half to the nearest Ikea for the pièce de résistance, (not to mention Benelli's favorite part), three faux lambskin rugs for the tree skirt.  I've wanted to do this since seeing it on Young House Love years ago.



Obviously, I have no idea how to take a photo of the tree lit up, but it looks great in person.  And, we bought a timer so we can stay lazy and not have to worry about turning the lights on and off.  It's the small things in life that make me so happy.

Growing up, my parents tree was always full of homemade ornaments and a hodge podge of ornaments collected over the years.  Each year my mom, sister, and I would love opening each box and remembering all the different stories behind each one.  One day, when we start having kids, I'd like to have a tree more like that, but for now I'm enjoying making ours a little fancy and elegant.

The one tradition Mike and I do have that we started on our first Christmas together was buying an ornament from a very popular local artist, (check him out here: Don Drumm Studios).  The ornaments run a little pricy, (about $25-$30 a piece), but buying one a year doesn't break the bank and we love walking around the store and showroom and seeing all the other pieces.  It's fun to try to find one that relates to our year and like the ornaments on my parents tree, I like unwrapping them each year and thinking about why we chose that one and the previous years.

Here's the first one we bought together:


Mike added the little polymer heart with an '08 for our first year.  The second year we had gotten our first kitten Vespa and found one with a kitten on it:


Unfortunately, he got really sick right after Christmas and on the vet's recommendation we had to put him down.  He was the first pet Mike and I had together and I'm glad we have a nice way to remember him by every year.  Sniff, sniff.  Okay, on a happier note, after that, we ended up getting Benelli and the following Christmas found another cat ornament, (Don Drumm really likes his cat's, maybe that's one of the reason's we like him so much!).


This is where Mike thinks I'm crazy because I always point out that Vespa's ornament has a moon, like night, and passing, and Benelli's has a sun, like a new day.  Yeah, kinda corny.

So, this year we had an important task to find a new ornament that fit our past year, and I think we found it:


Yep, Santa riding a blimp!  Let me explain, our city is the headquarters of Goodyear and one of the blimp hangers is just a bit down the road.  So, although it's not technically our first year in our house, it's the first full year in our new city, and will always be remembered for all the work we did to make it a home.

So, there's our Christmas tree and a little of our traditions.  Anyone else have some traditions that include blimp riding Santa's?

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