tis the season

This has been the week of getting a "splash of Christmas" up in our house. Tree shopping was a breeze again this year thanks to the Lowe's store just down the street. I know the fake tree is easy clean up and you only pay for it once but I love picking out a tree each year and I love how my house smells of fresh greenery.

Decorating the tree went pretty smooth this year. All the lights still worked from last year and I found three new cool ornaments for the tree this year (I started a tradition a couple years ago of getting one new ornament per person per year that describes you).

Hutch also wanted a tree for his room, this is really the only one that I could find that would fit on his dresser but he seems to like it.

I wished I could say doing the lights outside was as smooth but it was maybe the worse experience hanging lights ever as far as everything working. Our main issue was racing to get some daylight to put these up. We also had an issue with the clips we put up last year to hold these lights. They were so brittle from being weathered through the year that we had to start from scratch. After not being able to find the clips that worked on our roof we resulted to ole faithful, the Staple gun. I have to tell you, it worked like a charm. After replacing several light bulbs, replacing many fuses because of me plugging too many strands into one outlet and climbing up the roof, we finally finished!!!

I know it looks simple but there are 11 strands of lights up on this bad boy. We seriously had a "Griswold Christmas Vacation" moment when I finally got it all to work without blowing a fuse, we stood out on the sidewalk and admired our hard work. Brett was the best sport about helping me and not giving up even when I wanted to. As much stress as it was to get these up and going, Brett and I had the best time laughing and working as a team to finish it. Thanks Brett for being the best guy I know!!!

Let the Christmas Holiday Begin!!