Tis the season

To blog about Christmas decorations, or so it seems. And since I have nothing else to write about, it seemed like a good plan.

Christmas tree lights were always a big deal in my family. There were never enough on the tree (even though it looked like it was on fire looking through the window), they were the wrong color, they didn't have the flower bulbs and on and on. My dad would spend at least a full day putting lights on the tree (it was fake, by the way), and then we had boxes and boxes of ornaments to put on which stretched out for a week. 

So when I had my first apartment, I bought a pre-lit tree from Wal-Mart to avoid the light fiasco. I picked up a box of plain colored ball ornaments, and then hijacked some of my childhood ornaments to add. I put it up and decorated it after work one night last week in less than two hours. I will note that my parents have given up the lights drama as well and purchased a large, pre-lit tree that has enough lights to satisfy everyone. 

What added to our ornament collection was that every year, my parents gave my siblings and I each an ornament that represented something we had done that year. I have a lot of soccer player ornaments:

But there's also the angel from when I was in a church play:

And here's my newest ornament that was a birthday gift from a good friend, that really does represent the last year:

When I got the tree up, it looked very bare on the bottom, so I started wrapping presents that same night, which seemed ridiculous but for some reason very logical to me. (And now, I am also very close to being done with shopping and wrapping.)

In my old apartment I had a mantle, and I bought the greenery for that. But no mantle in this apartment, so I added this to the top of my bookshelf.

One year I had three nativity scenes in my apartment. It seems that was a bit of overkill. So I've settled on this one for now:

Since I live by myself, I always struggle to justify pulling all this stuff out and putting it up just for me. But I always do and am so glad that I do because I love sitting by the light of the Christmas tree during December.