Christmas recap

By a day or two after Christmas, I'm over it all and don't want to see anything Christmas related until after Thanksgiving the next year. So I thought I'd hurry and get a post up with our Christmas decorations for this year commemorated and our baby girl's first Christmas documented so then we can move on to the new year!!

Welcome to our home :) The typewriter serves as our guest book (when I remember to have people "sign" it). The tree is meant to be a card holder, but I like it better by itself, so I ended up using the typewriter as our card holder as you can see further down. I want to spray paint that bright silver star with something bronzish…maybe I'll get that done before I pack it away for next year. The wreath is a fresh one from Trader Joe's.


Thomas Kincaide really isn't my favorite, but the painting below was my husband's before we met, and since it's 5th Avenue in NYC and not a cottage or a lighthouse, and since it covers the weird cut-out nook above our fireplace, it stays. And it works really well for Christmas, I think. I hung ornaments from the top of the frame so they would float in front of the glowing sky.

The vase hold our glass ornaments, since we have a tree-trimming open house every year, and invite plenty of families with children…I put out all of our unbreakable ornaments for that, and keep the glass ones safely out of the way. The stockings are all handmade…mine & Dave's were a wedding gift from my oldest friend…um, not that she's older than all my other friends, but that I've known her longest. Can't figure out how to say that correctly! Lucy's stocking was made by a dear friend back in NY…I love the jingle bells and that her name is knit right into it. The tree needs one more strand of lights, and I think we'll go back to the short-needled kind next year. Much easier to actually hang ornaments from, instead of them sprawling on the surface like they do on this one!


After using whatever I had on hand for the mantle, I decided it needed some candles, so I headed to TJ Maxx…and found my favorite…fake, remote-controlled candles! yay! So weird. And Dave hates the way they smell, so we barely "burned" them at all. But it just cracked me up, the way technology has taken over everything.


I have loved receiving so many Christmas cards from far away friends and family…it's fun to see how folks have changed and grown over the past year.


Here's the card we sent out this year. She really does.



Look what we found under our tree yesterday! A wee bundle of joy. She's my best gift this year, for sure.


She was super smiley, as if she actually knew what was going on.



She did great opening her gifts…and playing with the paper :)



I love how she smiles like crazy for her Daddy…and how he interacts with her. He's her biggest fan.


Sigh. I found her cousin's pictures from last year in this outfit…her cousin who is now walking and talking. That'll be her next year!


This shot will get put into an ornament frame for adding to our tree next year…love how our family has changed each year we've been married.

oh, christmas tree, oh christmas tree!

I can't remember the last time I went to cut down a Christmas tree. (Okay, actually, I can. It was a few hours ago. Humor me.) My last few single Christmases I walked around the corner to the boy scout lot and got a tiny 3-foot table tree and carried it home to my tiny apartment. Our first two married Christmases, we just went to a lot and found one already cut for us. This year, being our baby's first Christmas and all, I guess we're feeling nostalgic for the family outing to cut down a tree.

And every man needs an excuse to wander around outside with a hacksaw in his hand and a measuring tape hooked on his belt!



The few short-needled trees we saw growing made Charlie Brown's tree look stunning.




Sixty-four degrees and clear, sunny skies was a bit of a different experience from my childhood memories of Christmas play practice and lots of snow and boots and snow pants and a sled and chainsaws. But I'll take it.

We debated getting one of the ones they ship in from Washington state…which seemed much more like Christmas trees to us…but decided that we would go with the local Monterey Pine instead. Perfectly shaped, very full…and I'm thinking we can just throw ornaments at it and they'll lodge themselves in amongst those long soft needles just fine!

enlightened

The town we now live in has one tourist attraction: Swan Lake and Iris Gardens. For the month of December, they string up millions of lights and put Sumter on the map. They've got the standard disney characters & santa, reindeer, etc…but I love love love how they light their trees.

Check it out.

ornamental

Just wanted to share an assortment of ornaments…

This one is from Pottery Barn from last Christmas. I kept hoping they'd go on sale for crazy cheap and then I could use these to decorate for our wedding…but they never went below $1…which is what I wanted them to be to get the quantity that I wanted! I grabbed a few for us anyway. This is my ornament style…bits of nature, lots of texture, and a little sprinkle of sparkle.


This is another PB one I picked up on clearance. I'd somehow like to have a tradition of a photo ornament of us each year. This photo is of us at Dave's unit holiday party. I just wish I lived near a PB so I could grab another photo ornament on clearance this year!


This is Bumbles. It seems that Dave's family has been consistently gifting Dave with Bumbles ornaments for quite some time now. We have quite a collection. This one made it onto the tree.


I don't remember where I got this sparkly star. But I like it. I have a plethora of various star ornaments. Perhaps one day we can have two trees, and one can be all fancy and the other one will be colorful and chaotic and just plain fun.


This one was a gift to me this year. Love it! It just was so obvious a choice for me, with my love of graphic design and crazy lime green things. It's from another favorite store…Crate and Barrel. Thanks, Becky!!


Maybe my mother in law can chime in with some history on this one. It was in one of the bins of ornaments that got passed to us from her. It looks quite old. But with the current bird craze in blogland, I'm guessing there are many folks whose blogs I haunt who would love this particular ornament.


We picked up this lovely blue and white snowflakey job at a great shop in Niagara-on-the-Lake where we spent our honeymoon. It's Murano glass…if you google that, there's all kinds of interesting info out there. This is made with rods of colored glass that are melded together & then sliced. Or something like that. Some of the pieces they had were stunning…and way out of our budget. I would love to own one of the larger pieces someday…and grabbed this ornament partially to remind myself it exists.


This is another one we picked up at the shop in NOTL. I just plain love this color of green. Can't resist it.