It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I love the feeling of Christmas! This year feels especially peaceful, warm, and joyous because of the husband I get to share it with. It's an interesting experiment to combine our two separate sets of Christmas decorations and see which survive.

To start, Jeremy's parents handed down to us the perfect size tree for our little apartment. Just one glitch, the tree stand was lost somewhere between Jeremy's last apartment, his parents basement, and our garage. Not to worry, I have a "real tree" stand handed down to me three years ago from my parents. A stack of magazines, half a roll of duck tape, and 1 frustrated Jeremy later we have a slightly unstable tree that is going to have to hold up to the new year! Moving on.

Themed or memory tree? Jeremy is from a strictly themed, white light, gorgeous tree family, while I am from a colored light, memory ornament, not so matching tree family. Both beautiful in their own way. The ironic thing was that while we both wanted to stick to our family way of theme vs. memory, we each preferred the opposite type of lights that our families had. Jeremy bought a whole set of colored lights last year, but luckily I had some white on hand from Texas decorations. I do believe that we succeeded in this area with minimal tears shed to create "our tree", what the child of our two family trees would most likely look like. Ornaments with special value collected over the years that mostly have red in them, tied together with red balls, matching ribbons, and white lights. It somehow pulled itself together.

On the other hand, our front door looks as if it is having an identity crisis: the TCU wreath we made this year is above our Hawkeye doormat and to the right of it a very country looking snowman! I have to admit, part of me does wish that everything from the front door forward was tied together in one look, but I easily let that idea go. Some day our house will blend perfectly, but for now I am happy to leave it be. It's us right now: 2 becoming 1. Our first Christmas.