Decorating the Christmas Tree

The tree is up and the house is ready for the holiday season. We cut the tree down on Sunday afternoon and put it up in the evening. The lights went on first - they are one of my favorite parts because they are shaped like stars. The I strung the silver beads around the little tree. After the trimmings were set, the tree was ready for the ornaments - many from my childhood (the Old World and Margaret Furlong ones), a few from recently (I Love My Yorkie) and a bunch of white & sparkly ones to fill in the tree.

Over the past five years, I've had a red theme on the tree, but since I did a bit of redecorating in the living room and got rid of all the red, I switched the tree decor to white, ivory & silver - which I'm loving! I found a new ivory, quilted tree skirt and two ivory crocheted stockings which are perfect for the look.

And although I've never really cared too much about the gifts and how they looked wrapped, this year I was fresh out of all wrapping paper, so I set out to find cute stuff that actually went together. I ended up with blue, silver, white and tons of sparkle! I still have more to wrap, but need to find more boxes - we purged a bunch while we were cleaning the basement out on Saturday - oops!