December Daily | Day 4.

William decorates the bottom 3 feet of our tree.

This afternoon we put up our Christmas tree - something that we typically do the first weekend in December, since we aren't usually home over Thanksgiving weekend. We start with the 9-foot prelit tree we bought last year. Then we add a few essential strings of colored lights around the middle: my favorite lights ever, lantern lights my parents bought in 1975. The tree just wouldn't be complete without them. Our garland is strings of red beads meant to look like strings of cranberries (as in days of old). Then the kids' favorite part - the ornaments. We have a hodgepodge collection of ornaments from my childhood and Chris', ornaments from Grandma Hare's and Grandma Howerton's collections, new ornaments we've picked up since we got married... and an assortment of unbreakable ornaments at the bottom of the tree, just for William. :) Some of our favorite ornaments include our baby ornaments, the kids' baby ornaments, our first house ornament, and several of the Hallmark bunny ornaments.

Finally, the star goes on top. We had to buy a new one last year, since the old star I grew up with finally gave up. The new one is super fancy, using fiber optics to change colors; it creates quite the colorful light show up on the ceiling. We don't have an official tree skirt yet; I've been shopping, but have yet to find one that fits both our tree and our budget and is pretty enough to suit me. ;)

Did I mention that the tree, with the star on top, has to be in just the right place in the living room, or it doesn't fit? Let's just say we neglected to account for the slope of the ceiling when we went tree shopping...