Deck the Halls Day!

It was a day of Decking the Halls- both at church & at home!

We started the day at the church re-stringing the lights on the garland for tomorrow's Hanging of the Green production. It was quite a mess, but with the help of some of the students, we were able to get it done in a couple of hours. We then all headed out for lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant- Little Rosie's.

We finally began decorating for Christmas today. Oh how I am LOVING decorating our new house! I got the mantle almost finished and we put together the 4 ft & 6.5 ft trees. We are opting to decorate them later this week. We decided to run to Home Depot to look at getting some lights and othe misc. items. We came out with a beautiful 9 ft 1 in real Christmas tree. It's SOOOO beautiful and smells SOOOOO good. We got a great deal on it too. Originally, I wanted the experience of going to the Christmas tree farm and cutting one ourselves, but time was just getting away from us and it wasn't looking like it was happening. The trees at Home Depot were already cut and ready to go. We were able to get it in the trunk of Matt's car with the seats folded down & the trunk partially open. :)

Tree Lot at Home Depot

Matt with our Christmas Tree!!!

Definitely a 9 foot tree!

Our favorite moment of the day was driving home from lunch when we looked in the truck next to us and found Santa & Mrs. Claus. Santa was chatting away on his cell phone. He looked just like every picture of Santa we'd ever seen. We must have been staring too long, because he turned and gave us a glaring look. Hope that doesn't mean we get coal for Christmas this year!

1st Day of Christmas- New Tradition???

I am totally a Christmas person! I love the lights, the decorations, the traditions, the food, Christmas plays, and the birthday celebration of Jesus Christ (I LOVE a good birthday party too)! Since this is our first Christmas together, we have discussed a lot about what our traditions will be. We haven't really decided on anything yet, but I decided to try something for Matt this year. I am a huge fan of The Dating Divas. They give all kinds of creative ideas of things you & your spouse can do- and most things are CHEAP! I love that! Well the other day they had a post about making a Christmas Countdown Calendar for your husband. Each day has a compliment, an act of service for your spouse (like cooking their favorite meal or dessert) or a Christmas themed activity to do together. Day 25 is a Christmas card. I won't lie, the project took some time. I wanted to think long and hard about writing the perfect thing down. Of course, as many of you know, this is Hanging of the Green week, so our nights have been filled with rehearsals. (I always have impeccable timing for these projects. Haha) I typed some of the little cards, and hand wrote some of the others. I like the personal feel of hand written, but I also like the uniformity of a pretty font. I glued each to an appropriate sized piece of card stock then made an envelope out of another piece of card stock. Once I got them all put together, I put them up so I could hang them and surprise Matt when he got up the next morning.

I used command hooks then tied the ribbon to each side. I used a ribbon that had a paper feel, but next year I think I'll use cloth. After that, I took clothespins and clipped the card to the ribbon. I wrote him a note that said "Happy Dec 1st!... Here are the rules for your countdown calendar: 1. You must open it in the morning. (Some won't make sense if he doesn't) and 2. No peeking ahead.
He seemed pretty excited about it today when he opened the first one. That alone made it worth the hours of work. Plus it was fun for me!