I can’t wait to try this crockpot recipe for hot buttered rum next month! I just wish I could invite you all over to share it.

We don’t have ours up yet, but will probably get it up this weekend.

J didn’t want to get one because of the mess, but he’s being overruled. I love having a Christmas tree. When I was little, I’d turn on the tree lights and just lay under it and stare at it for hours. Our tree was always decorated with a random, eclectic assortment of ornaments, accumulated through my and my brother’s childhood. Some of my favorites were ones that I had made over the years in school — little crosstitch stockings or wreaths. We had several strings of colored lights — different sized-bulbs, some flashing, some not.
My mother always insisted on tinsel. I’m not a big fan of the tinsel, though. I also liked these snowflakes made out of straw or thin pieces of bamboo that we received as a gift one year. My mother began collecting glass spindles to be used as ornaments. They are quite beautiful.

Some years, we would go out in the country to a Christmas tree farm and tromp through the fields, looking for that tree that was meant just for us.

Since his parents divorced when he was little, I think J’s Christmas memories are mostly of deciding who he had to spend the holiday with and shuttling back and forth between his mom and his dad’s families, neither totally his own.

So, we made a deal. I told him that we were having a tree without question this year and that I could either go out and get some cheap-ass artificial tree now OR we could get a live tree again this year and I could shop the sales for a decent artificial one for future years if you continues to be averse to live ones. He opted for this scenario. Yay!

The first year we were here, we got our tree at the Moravian Church around the corner. Looking for a better deal, we got a small tree last year out of the lot at the grocery store. This year, I think we will go to a lot that is being run by a local non-profit organization. (I’m on a mission to make choices that “give back” first to the local community — some of the stuff we do at church, etc. benefits those in need internationally, but we have people with tremendous need right here, too.)

Anyway, I’m hoping to start putting other decorations up this week — I plugged in our Moravian star tonight and set it up on the timer to stay on for a couple of hours every night. Can’t wait to wrap our banisters with garland and lights. And my mom gave Daniel a Christmas bear that glows with fiber-optic lights which change color. Tacky, no doubt, but the babes love it, so we do too.

And hanging the stockings on the mantle. We need to add another one for Mr. A, as it is his 1st Christmas. (He only missed it last year by four days.)

So, tell us about your tree. Or tell us what your favorite decoration or thing to decorate is.