Merry Christmas!

Wordless Wednesday "How Dad Wraps Christmas Presents"

2012 Christmas Decorations

This was the first year I had my own house to decorate for Christmas and it was a lot of fun. 

Last year before I moved my mom let me take a few of her old Christmas decorations so that helped tremendously.  Christmas decorations can be expensive!

My mom made this tree skirt for me last year. It is reversible so next year it will look like I have a new one! 

Special ornament

We don't have a mantle so I had to get creative...

This is the first year I didn't go with my family for our annual Christmas tree hunt. Every year my family heads up to the mountains to find a "natural" tree, go four-wheeling, shoot guns, and cook hot dogs over the open fire. I missed out on this year, but I still got a Oregon tree! My dad sent us a tree on a load of lumber that was going to a nearby job site! 

Can't have Christmas decorations without deer antlers :)

I got the inspiration to make this glitter reindeer from here on pinterest. It was super easy and I love the way it turned out. Now only if I had a mantle to display it from... 

This year Trevor and I started our first Christmas tradition. We each got each other a special ornament that represented something that happened during the year. I got Trevor a boxer dog ornament to represent adding ruby to our family and he got me a beautiful church to represent our marriage (even though we didn't get married in a church, it was still cute and I love it!) 

Picking Poinsettia's

Yesterday we went to a nearby nursery to pick out some poinsettia's. 

I love going to this nursery because there are rows and rows of beautiful poinsettia's. 

I had a couple great helpers too! 

The house is almost all decorated. I can't wait to share pictures!

 My mom is here this week visiting so I'm sure we'll be doing some crafting and making more decorations. 

Traditional Christmas Tree Hunt

Every year my family goes to the mountains to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. We were lucky this year and had great weather!

The last few weeks I have been taking the "Get out of the auto zone" photography class from Lisa at A Long Road to China which was great! This past weekend I finally got to put my knew knowledge to practice. Below are some of the pictures I took in manual mode

(note* if I am in the picture, they were not taken in manual lol)

My favorite part of the trip was taking pictures of the snowball fight.

Mostly because I wasn't getting hit with snowballs ;)

My camera was my shield.

Plus, I got some great action shots!

For the full effect of this next photo, please click to enlarge.

The facial expression is priceless :)

My mom found us the perfect tree!

Which is still laying in our driveway lol

Always nice to have some boys to haul that heavy thing!

It didn't really fit to well in the truck...

As you can see, we like our trees tall!

And the best part about the weekend... my boyfriend got to come visit from California!



Christmas Tree Lighting

At school every year they have a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Since this is my last year here I thought it'd be fun to go to. It's nothing real special, just some Christmas music and hot chocolate and of course the count down to lighting the Christmas Tree! What made it fun was the special friends that went with me :)

I love the Christmas Season!