It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...after a near tragedy!

We decided to go ahead and decorate for Christmas today, since we won't be home most of next weekend to do it. So, Tim went out to the garage to pull out all of the Christmas decorations and the tree. As soon as he brought them in, they were empty and things were put all around the house. I got our handrails decorated outside.

It was a little sad because last year, we had a great porch with posts and rails and I was able to put up all the garland and bows and lights, and this year I don't really have that great of a place to decorate outside. Then, I decorated the mantle with the vases that I put together with the cranberry looking filler with the candles.

I had seen this done with real cranberries as a table centerpiece and realized that I could do that myself! I decided to not use real cranberries, but I think it looks pretty good! Then, we put up the tree.

Tim put the star on top and I began looking for our ornaments. For some reason they were not packed in the large plastic tubs with the rest of my decorations. After going back and looking in the garage about 3 more times to see if there were any tubs that we had missed or if they were in a box that we had packed when we moved, I began to get a little worried that we had lost all of our ornaments in the last move. I went and looked through my office closet to see if I might have packed them away in there or in the hall closet...nothing. At this point, I am crying and telling Tim something like, "Everyone is going to be so mad at me because I lost our childhood". You see, we both have all of our childhood ornaments that we made or were given to us that we have always used on our Christmas tree. We also have two hand painted ornaments that my wonderful sister-in-law, Natalie, made us. One the year we got engaged and the other the year we got married. I cherish those ornaments because they are so personalized and I know how much time and love went into them. Then, I was trying to figure out how I was going to call my mom to tell her I had lost all of my ornaments. I just knew she was going to be so mad at me and it was going to be like the Christmas ornament disaster when my brother, Ryan, had made my mom a glass ornament in art class and my mom dropped it on the kitchen floor and it shattered, causing everyone to cry. Yes, it was going to be that disastrous. Then, while I'm crying on the couch, Tim says that we should go look through his closet and see if they might be there. This entire time we had been looking for a plastic tub filled with tissue wrapped ornaments, because that is how we both remembered me packing the ornaments up...two years ago. We had totally forgotten that I bought these great little ornament organizers last year. So, of course, the last place we would have looked for them (the bottom of Tim's closet) was where they were, in the perfect little ornament organizer!! I was so relieved! We put the ornaments on the tree and reminisced about each of the ornaments we put up.

We are not done with the decorating yet. There are some glass ornaments that I found that I just love that I want to hang on our tree as filler since I had forgotten how bare our little tree is! I'm also going to attempt to do the curled ribbon on our tree this year. Natalie is so good at it, and I'm sure it will end up looking like ribbon threw up on our tree, but I'm sure going to try! I absolutely love Christmas! Right now, I am sitting on the couch with the lights out, enjoying our lit tree and mantle. It's so perfect!