Day 2 - Christmas Decor

Friday, December 3, 2010 - 
Scheduling the 25 Days of Christmas for hubs can sometimes be a challenge.  Why?  Several reasons:
  • Hubs (or myself) may not "feel" like doing the activity that specific day
  • Weather may not always cooperate
  • Spontaneous plans can interrupt the schedule
This is expected, but as a planner, I always have a back-up plan.  There is always room for flexibility, after all, they are planned just so we have fun (or get things accomplished while feeling holiday cheer!)  On day two, it happened.  The theme of the day was "Holiday Decor," specifically aimed at the Ahrens' tradition of creating our own wreath to hang on the door.  Our second holiday together, hubs surprised me by purchasing all of this greenery which we then molded into a fantastic wreath.  We've done it every year since, but last night, by the time we would have bought the greenery, had dinner and prepped everything, it would have been a little later than we would have liked.  So instead, we decorated the tree (which we were going to be doing anyway, we just focused our energy a little bit more) and decided to do the wreath another day.

I'm the kind of person who would love to have themed trees in every room (yes, I like to theme rooms for events as we recall.)  A Disney tree here, a red & green tree there - the possibilities are really endless.  Right now, I'm thankful to have not one, but two trees.  We started this 'one real tree, one artificial tree' concept when we moved to Carmel a few years ago.

On the main floor, we have the 'real' tree full representing our relationship and adventures throughout the years.  It includes ornaments from our travels (we always purchase a cook book and/or ornament when we travel) as well as ornaments that we give to each other for special occasions (which is mostly the holidays.)  Inspired by Fun & Fearless, I wanted to show you a few of my favorites:

 

Quick explanations: The Mickey/Minnie ears represent our wedding as we were introduced wearing our own hats, the Mickey ornaments were purchased during our Disney vacations (the Santa bearing Mouse ears was from our engagement trip and the other is from this past summer) and the Canadian bear is from the Granville Market in Vancouver during our anniversary vacation.  And of course hub's favorite:

Downstairs, the artificial tree has been switched up this year.  In the past, it was known as the 'blue tree.' Since I bought the Disney topper during the girls' vacation at WDW this past summer, I've shifted our red and green bow downstairs.  Thus, all those blue ornaments wouldn't really fit the scheme, so I expanded a bit.

Instead, ornaments I received growing up now hang.  Every Christmas my mother would give me an ornament, here are few of my favorites:
 

The house is bright with lights as the holiday cheer is surrounding us (especially with this chilly weather in the air.)  A busy weekend is ahead including today's activity for Day 3, tomorrow's activity and the End of Movember Gala (there is still time to donate!), and I'm off to Purdue on Sunday for a Sorority function before our Day 5 activity.  Busy busy!

Any big weekend plans?  How is your holiday decor coming along - are you in the holiday spirit?