Christmas Decorating

Gotta love the holidays!! Hugh and I worked really hard last year to make sure that we decorated the house for Christmas since we were hosting two family parties. We bought a tree, ornaments, stockings, and we actually made our own garland to cover the banister. Neither of us is very creative but Hugh is very gifted in the areas of engineering so managed to make it all work. This year we aren't hosting any parties but we still decided to decorate. We even gave into the neighborhood peer pressure and put up lights outside. I have to admit that I actually enjoyed getting to do all of it this year. There's something to be said about traditions and I feel like we're making our own and that's special to me. We purchased a new camera about a month ago and I'm being completely honest when I say that it's smarter than me and Hugh put together. It's a very nice camera and Hugh's working really hard to shoot manually with it. I currently don't have the patience to work all of the manual settings so I'm fond of the automatic mode. More on that later, but I wanted to post a few pictures of how the house looks. Hugh took these pictures and I think he's turning out to be quite the photographer!

This is an up close view of the ornaments on the tree. In the background is our mirror.

Here's the full length version of our tree and train!

 This is the fireplace and stockings. Ours are on the outside and the inside ones are for the dogs.

Ok...I lied. I took this picture on my own with the flash. It's the garland we made to go on the banister. When we bought the garland it was simply the greenery and the pine cones. We added the lights, berries, and poinsettia flowers ourselves with wire.  Notice that our banister is actually a wall, so Hugh came up with the brilliant plan of attaching them to the wall via some small nails and zip ties. 

This is an ornament and I just loved the picture!

 Two years ago we spend Christmas in Indiana with our Aunt Ianne and Uncle Paul. Hugh and I started a tradition of giving each other an ornament as a Christmas gift. Hugh got me the dachshund one on the left and I got him the marshmallow baseball player on the right. This ritual is my favorite Christmas tradition.

I had to post the dogs. This is how they are feeling about the decorations. :)

I love the holidays!!

Love,