It's Beginning to Look A Lot (well, a little) Like Christmas....

I've "decorated" my blog.

And I've decorated my tree.

But that's the extent of my decorating so far. I've still got to put up the nativity scene and decorations on the mantle. We sold our computer armoire, which is where we usually display our Christmas village. So, I'm not sure if we'll have the village out this year. The absence of the computer armoire has also affected our tree. Two years ago we bought an artificial "pencil" tree to save money and floorspace. I love the look of the tree, but without the furniture around it the tree does look pretty skinny.

I thought I'd give a little tour of our tree and some of my favorite ornaments. Most of our ornaments have a story or special meaning attached to them. It's like a really tall and beautiful scrapbook!

Ornaments representing our first Christmas as a married couple(from 2001) :

One of Anagrace's first Christmas ornaments (from 2003), a gift from my grandmother, whom she is named after. It's kind of hard to see,but there is a cherub on it:

A few ornaments from my childhood:

One of the ornaments that my great Granny West made:

Although the orange doesn't "match" my tree, I couldn't leave it off...an ornament from our church commemorating our first year there(2007):An ornament made by one of the special education students in my class from my very first "real"job:So, those are just a few of my favorite ornaments. Here is the tree in its entirety:I can't really do an angel or a star because you can view our tree from 2 angles, from the front door and from the living room. I wouldn't know which way to face the angel or star! So, a bow, berries, flowers and pinecones work nicely around the top of the tree, I think. The tree topper:

I'm hoping to do some more decorating this weekend!