Christmas 2008

The Stewart household is feeling quite festive these days. The mistletoe candles are burning, the tree is trimmed, the Christmas music is on, and the stockings have all been hung with care!

Eric and I usually scour the Christmas tree farms looking for the perfect tree, but the last couple of years, we have not had much luck finding either the perfect tree and/or the perfect price. Last year after a day of riding around from farm to farm looking for the perfect tree, we became more and more frustrated that the farms had no decent trees to cut down, and the Frasier furs were insanely expensive! So, we ended up making our Christmas tree purchase at the grocery store down the street on the way home from our frustrating day. We laughed all season about our beautiful tree from the neighborhood Food Lion. It really was a beautiful Frasier fur for $30! So this year since we had Madeline, we decided not to put ourselves through that frustration again. We loaded up to drive 5 minutes to the "Lion" to get our tree. Apparently the word spread that their trees were perfect and reasonably priced because there was not one tree on the sidewalk!! A few little bristles were all that remained. Off we go to the Lowes, and wow, did they have a fantastic selection of Frasier furs for reasonable prices. Again, we walked out with a beautiful tree for $35! (Next year, we'll have to have a new plan for purchasing our tree since Madeline will be more into the holidays. We do want her to experience the whole tree farm thing complete with blow up Santa and snowmen, rows and rows of trees from which to select that perfect tree, and maybe even some hot chocolate!)

We got our tree home and in the stand on Saturday afternoon. Earlier that morning, we had pulled out all the Christmas boxes. I love how our house turns into a complete and utter disaster before and during the Christmas decorating, and then afterwards the final product is a cozy, festive place.

Madeline enjoyed the decorating from her perch.

Just a few photos of the chaos:

Boxes were EVERYWHERE. It really does amaze me how we manage to pull out all this stuff in no order, cover most surfaces with something festive, and somehow the house gets put back together. The after shots: