O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree (2010)!

At last!  After Our Christmas Tree Cutting Adventure, our $35 tree is now decorated and looking lovely in our living room!

I guess we can call this the 'before' picture. I took this after Alex and I wrestled the tree into the stand and spent about 20 minutes getting it to stand up on its own (fake trees really are easier)! But we were in for the real experience!  So, after we were covered in pine needles, sticky tree sap, and smelling like a pine scented air freshener, there it stood ready for decorating!

With a little help from my 'Elves' Rocco and Sadie (not really... I wish, but instead Sadie stole some ornaments!) I had it decorated top to bottom!

Here it is!

...and here it is at night all lit up!  Sigh, makes my heart fill with warmth looking at it!

 The ribbon going around the tree is my favorite part (found it at JoAnne Fabrics). It has a linen-y texture (which I love, it's everywhere in our house) and printed music notes on it with a red border. It sort of reminded me of the music note candle display I loved in the Pottery Barn catalog (image below).

So cute!  Right?!?! I wanted to get a close shot of the decor so here is a REALLY BIG picture that shows how cute the music note ribbon is. I ended up using it for a lot of the other decorations in the house.

For the ornaments, we stuck with only silver and gold tones in round bulbs and snowflakes. I wanted to keep the red in the ribbon as the only pop of color. Then we used just the plain old clear tree lights (as usual I fear the bright color lights). It was a bit more challenging decorating a 'real' tree, there are some uneven and bare spots that made it hard to work with and take decent pictures of. But I think it worked out well!

Our tree topper is extra special this year!  Why?  It's our first! We've actually never had a tree topper. The top was always bare (Alex is giggling now) when we used our little fake tree from the apartment days. We found this one at Target (for $15)and just loved it.  It is frosted glass with 10 small bulbs inside.  We really wanted one that lit up and it was just perfect!

There is more to come!  I went crazy this season and decorated more than ever before!  You can see a little preview of the garland on the windows, but I also did the mantel, the sideboard, the dining room, and the banister!  I will follow up with those blogs over the next few days!

PS- we haven't forgotten about our Spare Room Project!  We were just sidetracked with Thanksgiving last week and Christmas this week, so get ready for an update on that soon!

We joined Thrifty Decor Chicks Holiday Link Party, and Hooked on Houses House Tour Party, Link Up!