New ornaments

I have always dreamt of having two Christmas trees.  One tree to be decorated with beautiful, fancy, matching decorations, and the other to be decorated by my family with mis-matched, old, handmade, and personal ornaments. Well this year, thanks to a great Black Friday Sale at Zellers, but dream became a reality as I bought my second tree this year (I don't know if I would have been able to convince the hubby of a second tree if it wasn't a steal of a deal --- that being said, I didn't actually convince him, as I went out and bought it without telling him!) 

So this year, now that we have our little girl celebrating her first Christmas, we set up one tree upstairs and one tree downstairs.  My downstairs tree is over 30 years old (a hand-me-down tree from my in-laws).  It is an absolutely gorgeous tree - even without decorations.  It's full and lush, and not all plasticy and fake looking.  So when I add my sparkly ornaments, gold ribbon, and lights, I sit back and look at it in awe.  Beautiful. 

The second tree is set up in our upstairs family room and is covered in all of the mis-matched decorations that we have collected over the years.  A few years ago, Evan and I also started a new tradition: buying a new ornament every year to represent something significant in our lives.  We have one for our first Christmas living together, one for our engagement, our new home, to say that we are parents-to-be, and this year Kennedy has an ornament to say that it's her first Christmas.    I look forward to searching for the perfect ornaments over the years to represent for our family, new and exciting things that have happened.  I hope that down the road we will look back as we decorate the tree and reminisce about each milestone in our lives and reflect on all the special memories we made throughout the Christmas seasons.