Getting Ready for Christmas

My family has always had the tradition of putting up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. I wanted to continue that tradition in our very first home this year. In the apartment last year we used a hand me down 6 foot tree lovingly dubbed "The Charlie Brown Tree" due to its pathetic lack of branches. Being in a new house with plenty of room to fill, I decided it was time to upgrade to a real Christmas tree.

The day after Thanksgiving I went to Home Depot to score an awesome deal on a tree that looked great. They had opened that day at 6 and managed to sell out of it by 6:30 so I was too late. I was offered a deal though on any tree we chose. I ended up picking a seven and a half foot, full, prelit tree that was beautiful. After getting home and putting it all together, it turns out a strand of the lights wouldn't work regardless of what I did to it. So, I returned the tree and bought a second one the same day...got home, put it together, no lights on this one either! Grrrr... Chris and I decided to go back to Home Depot later that weekend hoping we could exchange our broken trees for an excellent price on an even better one. No manager=no luck so we got a third version of the broken, pain in the butt tree. Again, we got home, put it together, and luckily it worked!

Here are a few more of our holiday decorations. We're still working on building that holiday collection!

Molly under the table as usual

Our cute little nativity scene

We've since moved the stockings to the stairs but here they are. Can you guess which is Crazy Maggie's?!

We can't forget the singing stuffed animals! Maggie goes nuts over these!


And, just for fun, here are some fun pictures of our back yard before all the leaves disappeared with Winter.