Our Little Baby Blog

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Last week our house transformed from regular living space to Christmas wonderland. Truly, we don't have a ton of decorations because I've only ever had just one room to decorate. But, I think we have just enough to make our living area look festive without seeming like a Hallmark store. Over the years, I can see us gathering up other items that have meaning to us and maybe 20 years from now we'll have a house filled with Christmas treasures.

First things first, we got a Christmas tree. Mike picked it up one night last week and brought it home after Anna went to bed. I think we should employ that strategy every year because it would have been tough trying to get her to stay out of the way while we tried to get it into the tree stand. Plus, she totally would have wanted to decorate it RIGHT THEN and we really couldn't accomplish that much in one night.

Anna and I actually decorated it ourselves the next night. As soon as she woke up that morning, Anna demanded that we DECORATE IT, DECORATE IT, right then and there. We'd watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special the night before so she had Christmas trees on the brain anyway. All day long, she'd shout out, let's decorate it! and all day long I promised that we'd do it that night when Dada got home. Well, around six o'clock Mike called to say he had to work late and, as you can imagine, I knew Anna would be devastated if we had to postpone it. So, we put on Raffi's Christmas album (ahem, the all time greatest Christmas album) and got to work. She got to put all the non breakable ornaments on, which means there are a thousand glittery stars all along the bottom branches! Spacing is not really a goal in our household this year, we're just trying not to wreck all the ornaments.

I had picked up some great new ornaments and some paper garland at a Fair Trade market in St. Louis during Thanksgiving and I love how they look. The garland looks like birds... I was going to say doves, but now that I'm looking at them I don't know if they look very dove-like. I'll play it safe and just say they're birds. Anyway, it looks awesome on our mirror. And the ornaments are just too cute not to love.

I even decided to get all crafty and made a little Christmas decorative wall thing for our dining room. I've seen this done before (though now I can't remember where, maybe on Cara's site?) and I thought I'd give it a try. Just take some quilting hoops, buy some fabric and stick it in there. Presto! Plus, I'm going to reuse these hoops after the holidays and put in different fabric selections to match our new paint (note to self, gotta paint the dining room).

One of my favorite decorations is this little wooden item we picked up in Germany on our honeymoon. I had such visions of this being THE decoration we would tell our children about and I tried to find just the right one while we were traveling. Ultimately, they were so expensive and we were a little low on cash (we'd just moved to Chicago and I had no job and Mike hadn't even started his) and so I ended up getting a cheap, but very cute one. Well, the first Christmas we used it, I put in the candles and it nearly caught on fire because the distance from the fan blades to the fire was not proportioned correctly. I knew why it had been so inexpensive then! Now I think it's funny that it will forever have this burn mark on it. Some day I'll get another one and maybe start a little collection.

We're not going to put out any presents until Christmas eve because a certain someone cannot be trusted around presents. I know that I would wake up to Anna sitting in a pile of paper shreds if I attempted it.

Every day we grow more excited about Christmas. We are so happy to have family coming to our house this year. I've got to get busy with my meal planning and figure out where everyone is going to sleep, but I'm practically giddy about it all. Having family around will be wonderful and I know Anna and Abe will soak up all the extra lovin'. Can't wait.

Merry Christmas!!