A Season of Firsts

We are staying home for the first time since we've been married (which will be 3 years on Dec. 28th!). I am super excited about this! This has brought about a lot of firsts. One of them being our first real Christmas tree.Our first year of marriage I felt like we still needed a Christmas tree even though we would be gone for the actual holiday...so we went to Wal-Mart and got ourselves an $18 fake Christmas tree and some bulbs and ribbon. Lovely. Last year we were actually gone the ENTIRE month of December so there were no decorations at all in our home. But THIS year we're sticking it out at home and so we've stepped it up on the home decor and I am LOVING it! Tyler thought for a minute that we would still be using that fake little tree we bought for our actual tree. He was, however, sorely mistaken. We were getting a real tree. He just had to be informed. :)

Our first little fake tree is now a really cute accessory tree all lit up and decorated pretty in the dining room - it is still serving a good purpose... So a few weeks ago we set out as it was starting to snow and bought ourselves a 6-foot Douglas Fir for $32. We do live in the Evergreen State where many of you folks have your trees imported from. Why would anyone go fake here?! I think that possibly next year - or the year after - when Max is older and will appreciate the experience more, we'll go to one of those places where you cut it down yourself.

Max bundled up, ready to find the perfect tree! Actually, he was really tired but we wanted to get the tree to start decorating while he was sleeping.

At the tree lot...you can't tell, but it was snowing pretty hard by now.

When we left our house 45 minutes earlier, it was slightly snowing but nothing had stuck. We live up on this ridge, though, and there was tons of snow when we returned! We have this ridiculously steep driveway that we couldn't even get up. Tyler had to shuttle us up to the house.

We got it home and cut the binding to see a beautiful, plump, amazing-smelling tree! I was so excited. The snow was coming down harder and harder (which, if you know anything about where we live, snow is not unheard of but it doesn't happen all that often and doesn't stick for very long). It was the absolute PERFECT day to be decorating for Christmas. Not a place to go and nothing to do but decorate for this fabulous season. I felt like the snow was our special gift! Max had fallen asleep on the way home from purchasing our tree, so he woke up to the furniture rearranged and our lovely tree in the family room. He just stared for a minute, taking it all in. We'd put a lot of the ornaments on while he was sleeping, but we kept several for him to put on. (Tyler and I both have the ornaments that were "ours" growing up. It is always so fun to look at them!) He loved it. We all did. Christmas music was playing, we turned on the fire, the garland and our new and old decorations all went up... it was the perfect day.

We are still adding to our decorations. Well, I am, anyway. There are a few that we got at Michael's that I need to paint. We couldn't find any stockings that we liked and so I decided to give it a go myself. If you knew my lack of skills you would find this laughable. I don't have a sewing machine yet, I had to buy scissors that would work on material, and it took two trips to the fabric store to get the correct measurements. But, I have to say that they are looking mighty good...considering!

Like I said, I am so excited about this Christmas and all of its "firsts". I love that I have my own little family to build traditions with!