You Know What's Just Around The Corner?

Hey guys? Guess what?

Christmas.

I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday in the everness of ever. Christmas decorations, Christmas carols, Christmas cookies, Christmas presents, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas ornaments, Christmas trees. All of it. It might not seem like it, but Christmas is just around the corner. It is forty-one days away. That is not very many days at all. Last night, I even started knitting Christmas presents. That makes it even closer.

Last year, I got a Christmas tree for the very first time. Almost all the other years in my life had been spent living at home, where my parents had a two foot tall fake Christmas tree that stayed up year round. There was no Decorating The Tree because the tree was always decorated.

This is my parents' Christmas tree, though you can't really tell how small it is from the picture.

The year before that, I lived in an apartment, but the landlord wouldn’t let me have one, because it was a “fire hazard”. But then I moved to a different apartment, and you better believe one of the first things I asked was whether or not we were allowed to have Christmas trees.

The realtor gave me a very strange look. “Yes? Why wouldn’t you be?”

I shrugged nervously, not wanting to give her a reason to say no. “Fire hazard?” I half mumbled.

“Of course you can have a Christmas tree.”

It was June at the time, which in retrospect may have accounted for some of her confusion, so I had a whole bunch of months to wait until Christmas. But eventually December happened, and I bought a Christmas tree. I spent a looooong time finding the perfect tree with my dad, and it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. It looked like this:

Apparently I don’t have a picture of my tree undecorated. I am extremely upset about this.

My parents gave me a few of their decorations, but they didn’t have many because their tree was small, and some were too fragile/special to give to me. I had two cats, one of whom was ten months old, and we didn’t know how they’d react to a tree. As it was, they didn’t care at all. But this gave me an excuse to go Christmas ornament shopping, which was the Best Ever. I got cheap filler ornaments from A. C. Moore and Michael’s, and then some niceish ones from Macy’s and such, and then a few super amazing ones from Anthropologie. I also asked for Christmas ornaments for Christmas, and ALL of my friends and my parents obliged and it was amazing. This is what my tree looked like decorated:

This was my tree last year!! It was beautiful ^^

Then I had a Christmas party and we decorated Bridget:

The decorating process!!

These are some of my favorite ornaments:

I had this made for me on Etsy and it has my name and the year on it and I love it :D

One of my bestest friends got this one for me and it's the best. Pooh is my favorite thing in the everness of ever.

Acorns from Anthropologie. Acorns are super special; their significance will be explained in a later post.

Bridget got this one for me. It's so delicate and gorgeous and Christmas ornament-y.

This is one of the few my parents gave me. They're itty bitty tiny glass balls in different colors; this one is silver, then I have a red one, a pink one and a blue one.

Three of my closest friends and I knit a blanket together a few years ago. It's one of my most precious possessions. This is a mini-version that the same friend who got me the Pooh ornament made for me. It's probably my favorite ornament.

This is another one from my parents. I know it was my dad's, and I'm pretty sure it was from his childhood. There are two of these, and then a long, skinny one. They are my childhood.

This year I’m living back at home, and there is some Debate about whether or not we can get a tree. My parents are worried about the cats still, which is absolutely ridiculous since we have proven that mine don’t care, the family cat is twelve or thirteen, and I refuse to consider the possibility that their cat would destroy the tree because it is too Magical to destroy. And if they try to say that cost is an issue, I will insist that it is both a Christmas present to me and also supporting the local boy scout troop and who doesn’t like boy scouts?

Was there a point to all of this? No. Not even a little bit. I’m just SUPER excited for Christmas :D