it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Our Christmas tree is up, the lights are turned on and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care.
I do love this time of year. I love the anticipation of Christmas and the joy in the weeks leading up to it. I love the Christmas lights and insist on leaving ours on morning, noon and night. I love the way the lights of the tree make the living room feel warm and cozy. I love rearranging our furniture and love that having a tree in our house gives us a reason to do it. I love this year's arrangement; it feels cozy and snug. I want to leave it that way, but our corner will be so empty once the tree is down. What else can we put there? I digress.
This year we waffled back and forth between going to the Christmas tree farm to cut down our own tree and picking one out at a nursery {that still counts as fresh, right?} We decided on the nursery: it's closer, warmer (that being a huge deciding factor), and fresh enough. Plus at the nursery we lucked out and Santa was there. We were happy with our decision and that lucky bonus. The boys had fun there, too. I told myself that they had just as much fun there as they would have at a real tree farm.

Last year I learned to relax about the way our tree looked. The boys love helping decorate, and it's fun letting them help. With their help comes clusters. Lots of clusters. Lots of clusters near the bottom of the tree.

An ornament cluster and part of the paper garland Henry made to help decorate the tree.

I like to hang wreaths on every door. I love these green and gold wreaths in the dining room. This picture turned out so blurry that I made it black and white.





I love this nativity scene. We got this set as a gift for our wedding. Call me a mean mommy, but I have been putting this on top of our armoire since the boys were old enough to crawl. I love it and want it to be a meaningful part of our Christmas decorations, but I also don't want it to get broken. The boys get to admire it from afar.


I also love our ornaments. I'm so fortunate to have parents who collected them for me when I was young and saved them each year until I was grown and had a tree of my own. We are trying to do the same thing for our boys now and buy them an ornament every Christmas; we try to find one that has some special meaning for the year. I love that each of our ornaments tells a story or reminds me of a special memory. It's fun unpacking the boxes of ornaments with the boys and telling them stories about them. {it's not all sunshine and roses, part of the unpacking involves lots of "no-no William" or "oops, William just broke another one"!}

We got this ornament on our first family vacation to Destin, Florida in October 2006.

I love this cute coffee mug my mom gave me last Christmas; it reminds me of my favorite coffee place. :-)

I gave the heart box ornament to Patrick for our first Christmas together, in December 2002. And he gave me the one to the right of the boy and girl sitting together. {Clearly that was him remembering my "natural" hair color"!}

We got this as a gift in December 2004, when I was only weeks pregnant with Henry.

Henry made this snowflake frame ornament when he was only two and in his first year of preschool. He was still such a baby! Homemade ornaments like it are my favorite kind. My mom made the adorable wooden block ornament for Henry when he was 1, December 2006.

This picture and the lighting is terrible, but I love these little trees. They're next to our armoire in our living room and add to the cozy glow in the room.