Our Holiday/Maternity Photos

I was strictly against doing a full on maternity photo session. This is the heaviest I have ever been in my life so I wasn't too excited to document it in a ton of photographs. When the holidays rolled around, I had been wanting to take photos for our Christmas card. While our photographer who did our wedding wasn't available to do them in time to use for our Christmas card, he was able to do it before the holiday. We turned it into a holiday/maternity shoot.

My husband has been thrilled this entire time that we are having a baby and he was so excited to do these photos and be included.

 

I think they turned out really nice! We had gotten engaged 3 years earlier at the Capitol Christmas tree so it was very fitting that we returned for these photos. We got lucky that it wasn't raining and wasn't terribly cold considering this was in the middle of December.

The Travelling Christmas Tree

Two years ago, I started our Travel Christmas Tree.

I had seen a purple tree and fallen in love with the fun color. I got a four foot tree that was only 20 dollars and was determined to turn it into something special. When my husband and I first began dating we went out of the country to Puerto Rico. While we were there we bought two Christmas tree ornaments. We were there in March but he knew my love of Christmas and we said that this could be our travel thing. Some people buy magnets or key chains or pencils.... we buy a Christmas ornament.

This is one of the two ornaments we bought in Puerto Rico. I use it as our tree topper since it's in the shape of a star.

The hummingbird was also from P.R. My mom and I have long history with hummingbirds so when I saw this, I knew I had to get it. 

The tree on the right hand side is from a local spot called Apple Hill. Set in foothills leading over to Lake Tahoe is a place where in the fall you can pick pumpkins, drink cider and eat fudge. Then in the winter you can cut down your own Christmas tree. We went a few years ago for the fall and had a fun time. This was a handmade ornament from a vendor there and it was perfect for our tree.  Then you'll see the two bears at the Palm Springs Aerial Tram. We were just there in November so this is a recent addition. Then of course there's an ornament from our Seattle Trip and a visit to Muir Woods...

 

We visiting Coronado and San Diego in July and found this hand painted ornament of the island.

We have our ornament from Dollywood, the Smokey Mountains and of course our favorite winery in Napa- Castillo De Amirosa also known as the Castle Winery.

I haven't been able to find a tree skirt that I love for this tree so this year I got a little crafty and bought some felt and made my own until I find one that I love. This one is all felt and I cut out the United States, California and West Virginia.

There's memento's from San Francisco, Great America, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Kings games and the Jelly Belly Factory tour.

The recent fires in Gatlinburg had me very upset. I've been going there since I was two years old so in June when I was able to take my husband there for the first time it was just perfect. We rode the famous chair lift to the top of the mountain and bought this ornament. Now they've had a fire and are currently out of operation.

While in Pigeon Forge we visited the Titanic museum. If you know my husband then you know he has a deep love of the Titanic.

So that's just a little bit of our travel tree. Next year I'm hoping to have the perfect skirt and even more ornaments to add to it! Maybe something from New York and overseas.

Our Wedding Tree

If you know me at all then you know that I am a huge fan of Christmas. It's by far my favorite holiday and I plan all year on the things that I want to when it comes to our decorations. So last year when we were planning our wedding, I wanted to incorporate as much Christmas as I could without it becoming too much Christmas and not enough wedding. One of the things that we did was instead of having a guest book we had guests sign ornaments.

Our videographer took this photo of our instructions to guests

 



We had multiple colors of ornaments and different color sharpies, set the baskets out and waited for the guests to fill them up. Our venue packed them after the wedding and they were boxed until this year. This year when we got them out of the box it was our first opportunity to see the ornaments. I thought this would be a fun thing to have instead of a guestbook that I honestly would probably only look at about once every 10 years. This way having the ornaments signed, we can take them out every year and look at them as we decorate the tree.

Our tree topper was actually our cake topper. I had it custom made on etsy and it worked perfectly as our tree topper. The ribbon was from a very large present we received.

Throughout the tree we have little wooden nutcrackers. These nutcrackers were a part of our wedding favors. We had these miniature nutcrackers on miniature champagne bottles. I kept a full set of the 8 different designs that we gave out.

I also included a copy of our program and our wedding invitation. Then I included ornaments that people gave us as presents. Everyone knows how much I love Christmas so you wouldn't believe the amount of ornaments that people gave us featuring our wedding date and names. I loved every one of them and I loved taking them out of the boxes. I'm sure I will for years to come.

I love how our tree turned out and I hope to put these ornaments on the tree for years to come. I'm trying to decide what to do for the tree skirt. I wish I had scraps from when they altered my wedding dress but the designer made it to my size and no extra material was available. I can't decide what to do for it. Hmm... any ideas?

67 Days Till Christmas

We are getting closer and closer to my favorite season!

 

I can't wait to bust out all of my Christmas decorations and Christmas trees. This year I'm putting up a Christmas Village for the first time! I've been collecting pieces for a little over a year now so I can't wait to display it. I'm also putting up a new Christmas tree this year. It's a black pencil tree and it will feature all of our wedding ornaments that guests signed at our wedding. I'm very excited to display it as well.

Christmas trees are labors of love for me. I will be putting up seven Christmas trees this year and with each and every one, I love seeing all of the ornaments come out of the boxes. I love seeing each tree take shape as the decorations get added. My trees all have themes and this year will be no different. My themes for the trees...

White Candy Tree

Blue Beach Tree

Gold Elvis Tree

Red & Green Tree

Black Wedding Tree

Red Movie Tree

Purple Travel Tree

 

On November 1st all of these trees will start going up. The first falls on a weekday so I'm hoping by the weekend I'll have them all up! This year, I'm adding some of my Fabric Christmas ornaments to my trees because they'll fit perfectly in with some of my themes.

 

 

So what kind of trees will you be putting up this year? If you see something you like on my Fabric Christmas website let me know and I'll give you a discount. I'm a sucker for helping decorate people's Christmas trees!

The Halloween Tree

Since last December, I've been toying with the item of getting a black Christmas tree. At our wedding we had guests sign Christmas bulbs  that we could bring out year after year and display. Plus our cake topper could also dub as a tree topper. I knew then that I wanted to display these ornaments and our tree topper on a tree the following season. Since the bulbs are all different pops of color, I knew that I wanted a tree that would allow these colors to pop. I got online and went to my go to Christmas tree store and that's when I saw it. A black tree. But could I sell my husband on the idea of a black tree? That doesn't seem too practical does it? Well it is....

Thus the Halloween tree was born. It doesn't just serve the purpose of being our wedding tree, it comes out early as a Halloween tree! My husband loves Halloween so doing a Halloween tree showed it's not just a Christmas tree.

This tree is 7 feet tall and came pre-lit with white lights. The fabric ornaments were handcrafted by me. If you want to see them in detail you can go here or here. The other ornaments were found at the craft store and honestly the dollar store. Items like the big orange spider and the spiders around the tree, the rat and the bats were all items I found at the dollar store. They aren't particularly ornaments but you can place them to sit on the branches. The garland is mesh used for wreaths and I found it at the dollar store. This tree took 3 rolls.

 

 

 I'm really happy with how the tree turned out. The people who have seen it so far love it which makes my heart happy. Now once Halloween is over the tree will be relocated to a different room and the decorations will get traded out for our wedding ones. So be honest. What do you thin of our Halloween tree? Do you decorate for Halloween?

Oh Christmas Tree!

One of my favorite traditions at Christmas is going out and getting my mom's live Christmas tree. Luckily this year I was able to continue the tradition of helping her with the tree. First thing first is getting the tree into the stand and making sure it's straight! Then you've got to pick the best side to show off all Christmas season.

 

Once we get the tree into the stand it's time to add the lights. This year it took us three light sets and then we used to strands of special lights that we got when I was a kid. They are actual M&M guys on strands of lights. Over the years the lights have given out and we've replaced the lights with new ones. There is one set that still has the original lights in it. I guess they'll keep going until the one year they don't and we will replace them.

Right after the lights go on it's time for the garland. I always feel garland is the hardest part on a real tree. It took us four strands of garland this year to fit around the tree.

The last thing that we do before getting all the ornaments on the tree is put the angel on top.

Once the Angel is firmly on the tree we can get started adding all of the decorations. We have ornaments that we've collected for years. There is ornaments that I made as a kid that we put on the tree and of course Hallmark ornaments that we collected like the first Barbie ornament.

A few years ago we had an incident where the tree wasn't cut evenly and wasn't sitting in our stand completely flat. This caused the tree to fall over in the night. We completely freaked out! We woke up, came downstairs and saw our beautifully decorated tree laying on the ground with ornaments everywhere and several of them broken. We got it back up and super glued the ornaments the best we could. The rest of that Christmas we watched the tree like a hawk. We would ask each other, "Does it look like it's leaning?" almost every day just in case.

Once we've got all the decorations on the tree we take a photo of us together. We also start working on the rest of the decorations around the house including the village on the mantle. The village is difficult to put together so every year I take on that task. Next year I'm also going to be putting up my own village and that will be a job!

What traditions do you have when you put up your Christmas tree? Do you get a real one?