it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

Our Christmas tree at its finest!

I love decorating for Christmas! It's so much fun and always puts me in a good mood. This year almost everything is a red and white theme. Our tree has been red, white, and silver for a few years now, and I just love it, so I continued the theme around the house this year. We also put up a string of colored lights in the kids' room, and Carter is way excited about it. He is really into Christmas this year, which makes it all the more fun for me and Stu. Every morning he thinks that Santa is coming that day - I really need an advent calendar so he can visually see when that happens. But if he hears something outside, he'll run to the window saying "Santa is here!" We also introduced him to The Grinch story. He pronounces it "The Wench." Nice huh? Those of you who know me, know why I really laugh when he says this!


Some of my favorite/meaningful ornaments:

I like pinecones for some reason and have quite a few on the tree, but this one is my favorite and pretty much started the obsession. It was one of our first ornaments, from Stuart's Uncle Derek and his wife Serena. I keep the little tag on it b/c it explains that in "olden days" pinecones were believed to be symbols of motherhood and were given to brides on their wedding day. I promise I won't go into this much detail on each one!


Given to me by my mom.


Our very first ornament, from Grandma Mills - we got married in 2002.


I like snowflakes too, and this one I made.


This makes me wish there were such things as candy cane icicles.


These little pretties are new this year, and I just think they're cute!