Decorating for CHRISTMAS!

Last Wednesday I decided that since we had the artificial Christmas tree that Madre and Kell had sent to us now, we should decorate for Christmas!  Lady Hiva reminded me several times that we should wait until AFTER Thanksgiving. Yes, it is a week before Thanksgiving, but I was excited! In an effort to appease her as I opened the box, I told her we could celebrate BOTH holidays! Good compromise, right? Nobody can fault me for being too early, here in the Philippines they have been playing carols in the stores for months now!

This is our first fake tree, even in Hawaii we would go wait in line at Wal-Mart until they opened the fresh tree section because they would sell out so fast (and they were expensive). Madre and Kell sent us a tree from Taipan Trading Co. and it looks so real that Lady Hiva and I both will comment how we think as we pass the tree, "We need to water the tree..." HAHAHA! Thanks Madre and Kell!

By the time I had the tree halfway set up, Lady had changed from saying "we need to wait," to "Lets go get the decorations because an empty tree looks weird." Now that's the spirit! Woohoo! We decided to do Red and Gold this year. (Last year was lime green, silver and navy). We made ribbon bows of several sizes to accent and within an hour we are done. You can see the yellow and orange Autumn decorations in the background. The whole idea of celebrating BOTH holidays went out the window because the "colors clashed" and Hiva told me to take the Autumn decorations down and turn on the Christmas music, "if we are going to do this, we HAVE to do it right!."

(Notice this was pre-removing the Autumn deco...)

We took the garland we had from before and remaining decorations from the tree, added a few extra things that we found here in a local accessory store and made two garlands for the living room and dining room.

Now the house smells like cinnamon, the tree is lit constantly when we are home, and we have been playing Christmas Carols continuously for the whole week! Christmas, here we come!...ahem...I mean, Thanksgiving here we come....THEN CHRISTMAS! YAY!