Colorful Christmas Tree

Now that we have a little bigger house, we have room to put up two Christmas trees! We put up our pre-lit tree in the basement and lovingly hung all of our "collected" ornaments from over the years. Adam and I each got at least one ornament per year since we were born and we've continued the tradition with Ryan. So, this is really a collection of memories and a start of many more! I still love putting on my favorite ornaments: a 3D gingerbread baker, a Dutch girl looking over a door, shiny gold angels, and "Our First Christmas". Adam has several wooden ornaments from his grandparents, Vikings ones (we thought about leaving those off this year), and many fishing-themed.  Ryan's have been Hallmark ornaments that correspond to one of his current interests, like a miniature "Speak and Say", a Little People Firetruck, and a tiny picture frame with his newborn picture in it. He was going to get a Curious George Reading ornament this year but tonight as we were cleaning up supper, we heard some rustling and discovered he had gone downstairs, found the stash of wrapped presents, torn open the box, and managed to break off Curious George's foot and the ball that was balanced on it. We're not sure it's salvageable and I'm disappointed it broke so easily, but we'll give it a shot of Super Glue and see what happens. It'll be a good memory/conversation starter at least!

For the upstairs tree we originally strung white lights, added some old red and silver balls and put some red polka-dot ribbon around it. I hated it. I took the ribbon down right away and this past week I finally found some ornaments I liked. I picked up some funky light green, dark red, and glittery gold ornaments from Floral Expressions and today got some glass purple balls and jewel-like purple "picks". I also added some berry strands, berry picks, and flower picks from previous years. It's not perfect (and isn't decorated on the back AT ALL) but I like the colorful look a lot better! As always, it looks weird in pictures, but here's a little look at the new tree. You can click to make the picture larger.

Just so you get an idea of how this goes with the rest of the room, here's a shot that includes some other parts of the room. I also love how the nativity set my grandma got me from the Hull Pharmacy years ago matches perfectly with our new kitchen/living room colors. We recently took down the vertical blinds and put up some light blue/dark brown curtains with dark brown shears and really love the new look!