Oh Christmas Tree

Last Saturday we ventured out to some of my family's farmland in my hometown to chop down a Christmas tree. We went to a huge plot of land that my dad's grandparents once lived on and farmed. It was quite the adventure, but we had a lot of fun and got more exercise than either of us cared to get.

Here's Kolby standing in front of our tree (the middle one).

My lumberjack cutting away. Unfortunately, the perfect tree happened to be REALLY far away from the road. The arrow in the picture below is pointing to a group of big trees by the side of the road where we parked our car. The group of trees in the right side of the picture is where we thought we were going to find our tree, but they were all too big. So we tromped through the harvested, muddy land even further (twice as far, in fact) to the total opposite side of the property to find just the right tree. It was a long walk back to the car. Kolby had to carry the tree and I handled the dog, the ax and the saw. Did I mention that the soil was more than a little muddy? Strapped on and ready to go.
We used bungee cords to tie the tree to the roof but didn't think about how we wouldn't be able to open the car doors. We both had to climb through the window to get back in the car. Kolby is a pretty tall guy to be folding himself through a window of that size, but he made it. The tree started to shift back on the drive home so we had to stop on the side of the road and fix it, again climbing in and out of the windows. I'm sure it as a sight to behold for the passersby. It is definitely not your typical Christmas tree look... being a wild cedar tree and all. But the price was right ($0) and we love it and had a great time making it at home here. Here is the before picture: After (our very first Christmas tree!): It was hard to get a good picture of it, but trust me--- it looks awesome. Different, but awesome! We love it.

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This is actually our first Christmas to celebrate at home together. Our very first Christmas was spent living with Kolby's parents because we had just gotten back from our honeymoon and our apartment lease didn't start until January 1st. Then last year we were in Australia. So, since this was our first Christmas at home and our first house, we really wanted to go for it and put up Christmas lights outside. Our house is small and our roof is pretty flat, so it wasn't too hard to do. Kolby did such a great job!

Even before we were married we talked about how great it is going to be to one day have a house together and put up the old-fashioned big bulb Christmas lights. This was something we've both been looking forward to for a long time, and we are so happy with how they turned out. We went with red and white bulbs and although this picture looks terrible, the lights look fantastic. Seriously fantastic.

I used hand-me-down Christmas decorations to get the rest of the house ready for Christmas. My mom had several bins full of old decorations that she hadn't used in years, so I grabbed a bunch of stuff to make do for this year and then I'm hoping to get a few new items when everything goes on clearance in January. Here is the front of our house:

Our entry table:

Our beautiful stockings that Kolby's parents gave us for Christmas last year. Pottery Barn is my favorite store in the world but these are the only things we actually own from there! Our house doesn't have a fireplace, so we hung them over our couch. Isn't Maya's elf stocking so cute?!? This is the sideboard cabinet next to our couch. Again, all these things look much better in real life than they do in these pictures! We're ready for Christmas!