THE BEST WAY TO SPREAD CHRISTMAS CHEER IS SINGING LOUD FOR ALL TO HEAR!

My most favorite time of the year is Christmas! I actually love all the days after Thanksgiving, but preceding Christmas best. Although I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Christmas, my mother raised me to appreciate each and every holiday. SO, on Thanksgiving I start my Black Friday shopping and all through the morning, get home early Friday morning after shopping is done, take a quick nap and wake up shortly later with abounding energy-far more than I should have for only sleeping a few short hours.

The moment my eyes open on Black Friday, I consider it to be Christmas time. I spend the whole day blasting Christmas music while I decorate my whole house. By the time I am done, as a friend once put it, it looks like Christmas came and threw up in my house.

I love EVERYTHING about Christmas so much, except Christmas day itself, because then it’s over. Everything before it is so joyful and magical. I love the sparkly, beautiful decorations, not just in my house, but all over! People put lights on their houses, stores are decorated with holiday lights and ribbons, even street posts! Heavens, even cars on the road are decorated like Rudolph (I’m not that crazy…or at least Zach won’t let me be 😉 ). I also love the music, in fact, I listen to it all year long when I am feeling blue, it cheers me up! I love the movies, I love gift buying and gift giving, and gift getting! I love cheesy holiday clothes. Hazel’s first year of birth, she had a different Christmas outfit for every day of the week, it was SO awesome! Hey, maybe I’ll post all her outfits some time!

This was Hazel’s second Christmas, but the first Christmas where she somewhat enjoyed it, so I had a blast. I was so busy having fun and doing corny things like making homemade ornaments with my kid that I really didn’t take as many pictures as I’d like, but below are some documentation of our Christmas this year-I didn’t completely fail!

This is my teacher tree! Since I am an elementary teacher, I get lots of ornaments every year, which I love! About my 3rd year teaching I started asking myself, what on earth am I going to do with all these teacher ornaments and homemade noodle ornaments that I can’t bear to toss? Make a teacher tree, that’s what. This one goes in our office and houses any ornament I have ever received from ANY student! See parents, all that hard work on your kids noodle angel ornament didn’t go to waste, it’s on my tree and will be there for years and years to come!

I have every square inch of wall space in my house covered with some kind of Christmas sign, here are just a couple. The ornament tree was a DIY project this year with one of my besties!

This is the wine rack. Pay close attention to the red sign on top. It may be my favorite piece 😉 . It says “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, but if the white runs out, I’ll drink the red.”

One of my favorite Christmas traditions was stolen from one of my best friend’s mom. I have a Christmas picture frame and each year I put a picture from that year’s Christmas and then use it as decor each year. I am starting to run out of space and I have only been doing it for the past 6 or 7 years. What am I going to do when Hazel is 20?!

I love this glass. I love wine, I love the holidays, and I love holiday decorations. One of my favorite things to do is get a wine glass for each season and use it every time I drink a glass of wine. When I was pregnant with Hazel I had to drink cranberry juice from this glass so I didn’t miss out a whole year of using it! 🙂

Another favorite tradition of mine is to take all the Christmas cards I get each year and turn it into a book for the coffee table each year. That’s what you see in the far right picture. I just tie them all together with red tool. So far I only have 3 or 4 years, but it is so fun to look through past Christmas cards and see how the families of friends have grown and changed. A lot of people don’t send them anymore  thinking they go in the trash, but they don’t, at least not in my house, so send me your cards!! 🙂

This may be my favorite tree because it is so unique. This is the hunting tree. My husband is  a big deer hunter so this tree is for him, as is all the woodland Christmas decor in the upstairs living room that goes along with it. The “ornaments” on this tree are shot gun shells. The garland is burlap and rag tag fabric from years ago that my mom used on our family tree. To top it off, there are deer antlers at the top for the “star”.

A little Christmas baking. The sugar cookies my mom makes are THE best.

Just a few cute pics of my girl in front of our “family tree”. Every year growing up my mom and Mimi would buy me a new ornament. Once I grew up and moved out I had my very own collection for my own tree. The fun thing is, my husband’s aunt actually did the same thing for him, so we had a really nice collection once we got married! These all go on our family tree and now we are adding to the collection by doing the same thing for Hazel.

 

Although she wasn’t as interested and excited about opening presents as I hoped, it was  a lot better than her first birthday! She was at least momentarily excited about most gifts.

 

That’s it! BUT one question I do have if you care to share, if you are a parent, do you prefer to let Santa give the “big presents” or something small? I think I am in the camp where I want credit for the big presents, not Santa. I think Santa will bring lame gifts so I can get credit for the bikes, game systems, so forth. What do you do and why?!