On Sunday, we put up our Christmas Tree. It still feels a little early, but I’ve got some plans for some Christmas items for the PAPERCUTS shop, as well as a couple of tutorials for the blog here… so I needed to kick start the Holiday Season a bit early over here to get myself “in the mood.”

We bought an artificial tree a few years back. (I’ve heard varying arguments on whether an artificial tree is actually eco-friendly or not, but I figure as long as we keep using the same one over and over, it’s better than cutting down a new one each year. While I miss the romantic nature of going to the tree lot & the smell of a real tree, I’m a big fan of pre-strung lights and not vacuuming up dead pine needles.)

Jonah is pretty excited. He put the star on top (with Tod’s help, of course) but we did the rest of the decorating after he went to bed. I feel like this year will be pretty magical for him. We’ll also undoubtedly spent a lot of time with my family, which will bring a lot of the holiday magic back for me, too.

Tod & I have a yearly tradition of getting toasty on spiked eggnog and singing Christmas songs while decorating the tree. This ornament was a gift from my mother the first Christmas we were married…

…and we made these Cinnamon Ornaments together the in 2004, living together in a 1 bedroom apartment in San Diego – the little gingerbread kitty was made because we’d just gotten a tiny little Puff named Rocky. These ornaments are 7 years old, and they still smell great!!

Before we’d set up the tree, I “caught” Jonah reading one of the Christmas books from last year. He loves to read, and we read books every day, but this was one of the first times I’ve seen him sneak off to read on his own. Needless to say, I spent a lot of my childhood hanging out with my nose in a book, so this photo makes me pretty happy.