Deck the Halls

I know it's New Year's Eve, but I'm just now getting around to sharing some of our Christmas pics. We spent so much time celebrating throughout December, that there was no time left to share our celebrations on the blog. So, I've got plenty of photos stored up to make Christmas last at least another week, on the blog, that is. 

This year, we weren't home for Christmas, and there just wan't enough time to decorate, so most of our Christmas accessories didn't make their way from their Rubbermaid tub homes this year. I wasn't even planning on getting the tree up, but Daniel insisted and put it up one night while I was at a PTA function. Unfortunately, we never did get around to our annual family decorating night, so it was never completed. It was a pretty tree, filled with silver beads, silver and gold ribbon garland and all sizes of glass balls, but it wasn't our usual tree filled with ornaments Daniel and I have been collecting the past 30 years. We are fortunate in that each of our parents gifted us with an ornament every year. We've continued the same tradition with Abigail and Cooper.  And, we've added to our collections by picking up ornaments everywhere we travel and live. Needless to say, we have a lot of ornaments. We love decorating the tree each year and reminiscing about the teacher's class we made the popsicle sled or the silly hobby we were into the particular year we received that ornament or the thoughts of a long ago vacation in places like Vegas or the several Hula Santas we accumulated over Christmas 2003 in Hawaii. 

I never did get a picture of our tree this year because it just didn't look like "our tree," but I did snap a few of the other arrangements around the house.

The dining room...

The Living room mantle...

The kitchen table...

The kids' trees...

I first did this last year and loved the outcome. For Abigail's, I used some pricess-themed party favors. I transformed tiaras into ornaments and feather boas into garland with one of her play tiaras as the tree topper. The pink tulle tree skirt was an obvious decision.

For Cooper's tree, I used leather ribbon to transform a bag of cowboys and Indians figurines into ornaments, made garland from twine rope, topped the tree with a red cowboy hat and used a yard of burlap for the tree skirt. 

There was also a cowboy nutcracker placed under Cooper's tree, but his gun is now broken off and he's been put away for own safety.