the holidays are upon us

We decorated the tree last night. We have the plastic balls that look glass, so we were able to let Malakai hang his first ornament.

It was so fun to put on some Christmas music on pandora and decorate the house. We had to move our dining room table into the garage to make room for the tree this year. Our house is 900 square feet and with Malakai in the second bedroom, we moved our desk to the living room- thus taking up the space we used to have for a Christmas tree. We never eat at the dining room table, so it wasn't a huge sacrifice and the tree looks quite nice in it's place.

This year I decided to take down a lot of our other knick knacks and decor from our mantel, the piano, and end tables to replace with Christmas decorations. I used the trimmings from the tree on the mantel and piano and think things turned out pretty well. I took a couple photos. We aren't finished yet as I think we'll take back the cheap stocking to get something nicer for Malakai as we'd like it to last through the years. It's either that, or I'll add a monogram to the one in the picture. We also need more hooks to hang all three stockings.

I did attempt to make a stocking for Malakai out of a sweater like I posted about recently. I didn't have a rotary cutter or a good place to set up my sewing machine so I attempted to make it with my mom's help. Sadly, it turned out much too skinny...so if Ben ends up having a secret santa exchange at work, I'll decorate it and fill it for him to take. It's almost the same size as the above stocking (in the picture it looks like a regular old sock) but I forgot to give myself room for the seam and it the material doesn't hold up quite right. oh well.

While Kai was napping I took some photos of our Christmas decor and these are a few of my favorite things (by the way, why is that even considered a Christmas song?)

This ornament was given to me by a co-worker and marks our first Christmas as husband and wife.

This is one of my favorites because it was given to my family by my grandpa who passed away when I was 15. He was half Hawaiian.

This is a new favorite, because I saw it for the first time yesterday. My mother in law gave Ben all of his ornaments, and I just love this one with his little photo in it.

I got this one in an ornament exchange at work and just think it's so cute.

We got this one from Ben's mom as well and I just got around to putting the photo in it last night. This is our 2008 ornament as we hope to get one for each year. Of course this year (after Christmas to take advantage of the sales!) we'll get a baby's first Christmas one.

This is what our plastic ball ornaments look like. We got them at Target a couple years ago because the cats (that we no longer have) kept knocking the glass ones onto our wood floor and shattering them.

This angel was on my families tree growing up until my mom got a new one a few years ago. It's sentimental but the gold doesn't match. I'm hoping to get a new topper this year and use this one as mantel decor or something similar.

And I've already got a few presents under the tree for my cousins (the ones ranging from 17-2 years old anyway)