it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas

well…not outside. it’s december 1 and there’s no snow on the ground!

but it’s pretty festive in our apartment.

on monday afternoon, i picked up a christmas tree and corralled brad into decorating with me all night!

he was very excited, trust me.

we put on a pandora christmas station and got to work.

brad was in charge of putting the star on top of the tree.

he did a very good job!

then we had to dig out all of our christmas ornaments.

my mom has been saving ornaments for me since i was a baby and brad’s mom did the same thing for him, so we actually had a pretty big collection of ornaments for our first tree! i stopped at target and got a box of 50 ornaments to fill in the gaps and we were good to go.

we went with white lights on our tree.

i asked brad while i was shopping if he wanted colored or white lights. he said colored, but it went in one ear and out the other and when it came time to grab the lights, i couldn’t remember which he said! instead of calling again, i just grabbed white ones.

wrong.

but i still think it looks nice!

after the lights, topper, and skirt were on and the tree was pushed back into place, we got to work putting up the ornaments!

jake was very interested to see what we were up to. despite their curiosity, the puppies were actually really good with the tree. jake tried biting some of the branches at first, but they’re pretty much over it by now and just ignore it! thank goodness…

the whole time we were decorating the tree, i kept thinking about how happy i was that we were putting up our first christmas tree together and being so thankful that we have many more to come!

the finished product:

i love it!

this ornament is my first ornament! it says “baby’s first christmas 1986” and has care bears! i always loved this ornament when i was growing up.

i also really like this dog one. it’s one of brad’s from when he was little. he always wanted to get a dog and he was never allowed to get a real one. but he got this ornament!

and we’ve had one ornament fatality so far…

when i came home from work on tuesday, i found this guy covered in slobber laying on the floor without it’s string and with a destroyed bow. shockingly, capone is the culprit! jake is in his kennel when brad and i are gone, so it had to be capone… at least he didn’t eat a glass ball!

and with that, number 73 is checked off my list!

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we put up a couple other decorations in our apartment too.

this is my single girl’s tree! i got this during my first year of grad school in my first “real” apartment! i still love it and had to decorate it with the original pink & purple ornaments i got for it that first year.

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our buffet also got a holiday makeover!

i flipped my striped runner over to use the red back as the base. then i just put red, green, and gold holiday ornaments in this wooden tray thing.

i also tossed in a couple tree branches that came off of the tree while we were setting it up!

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and finally, our table. you guys have seen this centerpiece peeking in the background of some of my recent pictures!

i got this cute white and silver tablecloth on super sale at target on monday.

i thought it was perfect for the centerpiece idea i wanted to try! i just took some of our holiday ornaments and put them inside my little things jar. then i put that all on top of a silver tray that i got to hold something at our wedding!

i love this centerpiece, but i think it could use some of jenn’s snowflakes to spruce it up just a bit more!

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and that is pretty much the extent of our christmas decorations!

one of our neighbors is super hard core and has christmas lights out on the bushes in front of her individual apartment! it never occurred to me to do that with “our” bushes… i think we’ll save the outdoor decorations for next year when we have a house (i hope i hope!).

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when do you decorate for the holidays?

as soon as thanksgiving is over, i think it’s fair game to get out my christmas decorations!