Beginning to look like Christmas

Saturday morning we picked up our Christmas tree. Our live Christmas tree. We haven't had a live tree in over 4 years so this has been quite the experience for both of our girls and a refresher for me. :)
I had pulled out the boxes of decorations on Monday and so we had several big mixing bowls sitting around, full of un-wrapped ornaments. I think that was more temptation for the girls than if I has set out big bowls full of candy! Our feather tree was decorated and undecorated and redecorated umpteen times a day. Nerve wracking for this mommy.


After we unloaded the tree we stood it up on the porch until Mike and I could get our "tree-stand" ready. (It had been full of flowers all summer.) When I turned around I found Rosie decorating the bottom limbs of tree! She was very excited to get started.
We finally got the tree situated inside and Daddy escaped to the garage leaving the lights and decorating to the people who enjoy it the most. Several hours later we were down to just the balls and Daddy was all finished outside, so he came in and held the bowl of ornaments for us and tried to take pictures. (I probably won't be posting any of those! lol)




I had decided to stray from my usual silver and blue decorating this year as I have spent the past 2 years collecting vintage ornaments. Our tree this year is much smaller than our typical artificial tree so my collection was just the perfect amount along with a bag full of colorful aluminum light reflectors.


Our living room looks quite different and I'm struggling a bit to get the whole look to be cohesive but it's slowly coming together. I am very excited about something different though. 8 years of the same-ness is enough for me. Gotta mix it up a bit every once in a while. :)


Christmas music is being played on constant rotation on the record player and both computers upstairs and down. The Christmas books are generally spread all over the living room floor and the Christmas movies stacked up by the VCR and DVD players. Candles are burning and even the weather has turned down right cold here. We've pulled out piles of quilts and have a stack of fire logs by the fireplace. It's definitely starting to look (and feel) like Christmas here at our house.