It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas...

Saturday night we put up the Christmas tree! We decided to put up our big tree downstairs this year next to the fireplace and then have the kid's tree upstairs. So, Bill struck up the Christmas music, got the fire place going and put the vanilla cinnamon scented air filter in and we were ready! Sawyer was running around out of sheer excitement as we were pulling the tree out of the box and getting down all the decorations. He just kept squealing, "It's Christmas, It's Christmas!" He was so excited, I thought for sure the poor guy was gonna wet himself...

We had bought a new pre-lit one from Costco a few weeks ago and were really excited to see how it looked! For the past four years we have been using a tree that we pulled out of my friend Erin's grandparent's trash....it was severely tilted and looked a little...weathered....but hey, it was FREE! We had received a letter a couple days prior from Costco saying that there had been some trees that wouldn't light up in the middle section and if so to bring it back. And wouldn't you know it, our's didn't light up.......ugh! How annoying! So feeling a little 'scroogy' I called Costco with my rant and rave on hand, only to be helped by the twin of Tiny Tim....just the sweetest young lady that was so apologetic and understanding about the whole situation! Since we would need to borrow a vehicle to take the tree back and since they didn't have any replacement trees, she said to just come in for a full refund and it was up to us either to keep or toss the tree! Thank God for companies that value customer service! (If the President of Brazil is reading this, take note!)

In the end, it looks just great!

Some of our ornaments didn't have hooks on them, but by golly he was doing to get them on the tree! I need to go down and do some touching up, because we seem to have large bunches of ornaments on the bottom two and a half feet of the tree for some reason and not a whole lot elsewhere....

Sawyer has been asking ever since Black Friday, when I bought candy canes, when we were going to put them on the tree?!? After we were all done putting up the ornaments, the moment finally arrived for the candy canes :)

After the mad rush of Black Friday was over and the adrenaline had worn off, it was time for one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season...(Drum roll, please).....Gift Wrapping! I just L*O*V*E it! Now, I only gift wrap by myself. I light a scented candle, turn on some good ole-Bing Crosby, lock myself up in a room and go to town!

Normally I have a theme of some sort to as to how I want the wrapped gifts to look underneath the tree. Not this year. All color coordinated efforts go flying out the window when you have a four year old who would really like to pick out the 'wapping paper'. So, we've got a roll of old school Santas, brown paper with gold stars, metallic black with penguins, and then a gorgeous dark purple medley with gold detailing (the one pick that I got). It looks like a hodgepodge....but when Sawyer saw everything wrapped, he just thought they were so incredibly beautiful!