Libby and I did what we could to decorate for Christmas this year. Here's our first Christmas tree. You can also see that we put Christmas lights on our hutch.

I got the tree while she was at a bridal shower on Saturday, so she got to come home to see it in its sparkling splendor (we did the decorating together, though, since that's part of the fun). It's nice to start our own Christmas traditions together and forge our own unique form of family Christmas spirit! It helps that we are both very fond of Christmas.

Although, as I think about it, it's not as if we are going about attempting to begin holiday traditions, we just do what we want. If it happens again: that's a tradition, right? Decorating was a fairly big deal at our house growing up. It was always fun to look at all the different ornaments as we put them on the tree. But that sort of thing won't be very remarkable until we've got a bit more time under our belt!

Our tree is alive, and is a stone pine. It is less fragrant than I would have hoped, and quite a bit more expensive than I would have hoped, as well. Nevertheless, it is Christmas. And we must have a tree. And it must be a live tree. After all, fake trees aren't really trees. They just look like them. Libby and I will have the real article.

Other Christmas spirit beginnings of the weekend: planning gifts for everybody and going to Torrey Music's Christmas concert. The concert was fun, but I do wish that some of the singers would have smiled more. Some of them just looked plain sad!

This is what our tree looks like when it's dark.



Now I see through a camera darkly... but later we'll turn on the flash.