One eternal square

We decorated for Christmas this week, and it's been fun trying to fit all our old things into our new house. We hung all the unbreakable ornaments on the lowest two feet of the tree, and the glass balls, etc. went above that. I put a little jingle bell on the lowest branch, especially for Malachi, which he found immediately upon seeing the tree. He has already spent many happy minutes grabbing it and making it jingle (muffled-ly, through his chubby baby hand).

(He also likes the santa-in-a-hot-air-balloon and the bear-in-a-rocking-chair.)

I like wreaths at Christmastime, but I couldn't find any that were interesting or modern-looking, so I finally used my nearly-nonexistent crafting skills to make my own. I just cut out squares from foam-core posterboard and then wrapped them in wrapping paper and glued them together. Kind of a cubist design. I made three wreaths; one for the door and two for the windows. Then they looked kind of bad on the back so I covered that with wrapping paper too. (Planning ahead is not my forte.) If I were doing it again, I might make two wreaths back-to-back so they'd look the same on both sides, but I'm happy with how they turned out anyway. Much more contemporary than anything else I saw, and (more importantly), cheaper!

Other highlights:

My indoor herbs died from lack of sunlight (not neglect on my part, never that!) and therefore I filled my little silver herb planter with shiny ornaments.

I love this tiny evergreen tree from IKEA. I hung little gold balls on it and then hung this spiny, puffer-fish-y star above it. It glitters. I like it.

My mom gave us this gingerbread man advent calendar several years ago, and the boys love it. Last year I tied two gingerbread men on each string so there would be no fighting, but this year they are going to have to take turns. There have been no unauthorized eating incidents . . . yet.

Another good thing is this Little People nativity set which we got as a gift one year. Ky loves it (as do Abe and Sebastian, still). I love having something out that they can play with all they want.