Happy Holidays

This is the first year in our new home, so our first Thanksgiving and Christmas in the home. It was our first time hosting Thanksgiving. We just had my parents visit, but we had a very nice visit and dinner turned out well. We'll take a couple years to perfect our Thanksgiving recipes, but we had a pretty good first round of them.

Here's our Thanksgiving table:

Next year we'll have my grandmother's china. My parents have been holding it for me until I got settled someplace more permanent than our apartment in California. Now I'm ready for it.

We just started decorating for Christmas. We decided to get our tree from a lot instead of hunting down a U Cut place (like I would have in California). My husband doesn't have strong ties to cutting down his own tree, but it was a family tradition for me. But, with a bit of reluctance, I gave in to picking it out from the lot. We are urban dwellers now, after all. And now we have a tree, which is much better than no tree.

Even though she has a cold, my daughter had fun decorating the with us. She immediately accepted the idea of the Christmas tree that lives in the house and actually started crying when we left it outside to hunt down the Christmas tree stand. We had to go visit it on the porch to make sure it was okay.

Isn't it pretty. Love it next to the red brick fireplace. Just need some stocking hung with care and maybe a big ol' wreath over the fireplace instead of the fan.  Merry Christmas!