the tree farm experience

Hubby went by himself to get our Christmas tree from Costco the weekend of Thanksgiving. Super festive, right? We did it that way last year too. The thought of tromping around a tree farm to find the perfect tree with a kook and babe just wasn't appealing. I'm really looking forward to when they can both hike through the trees with us and help find a tree but this year wasn't the year to start that tradition. Even though we weren't there to find the perfect tree, we still visited a local tree farm for the experience of it all. We visited the petting zoo, took a horse-drawn carriage ride, stepped into the gift shop for 3 minutes, let the kook carry a saw around and walked around looking at the trees. The kook was enamored with the tiny tree. The crazy photo of her is her "TA-DA!" proclamation. All things tiny are her favorite. We were there just long enough to enjoy the amazing California holiday weather and leave when the kook started to throw her attitude around. Yeah. That happens. It was at that moment that hubby and I were thankful that we weren't in the middle of trying to find a tree and that we took the easy Costco way out. Right before leaving we hit up a stranger to take our family photo and it's one of the best ones we've gotten minus the little man looking away. Yay for strangers that know how to use cameras! Because as we all know, if there are no pictures to prove it, it didn't happen.

the little man's FIRST HAIRCUT

Someone got his first haircut and someone gave her first haircut this week. We had a friend do family photos for us on Tuesday and I knew I had to trim the little man's shaggy hair before putting him in front of a camera. I was definitely nervous as it was my first time cutting anyone's hair- besides a very unfortunate extreme bang trimming when I was 6 or so. I set the little man up in a booster chair, got some tiny sharp crafting scissors and just started cutting. The little man was dodging every attempt so I grabbed him a spatula to chew on. I trimmed as much as I could in the 10 minutes he allowed me near his head before he started throwing the spatula on the ground and swiping at my scissors. It is by no means a pro job and I definitely won't be waving him around out in public and declaring my hair cutting brilliance, but the shag is gone and the little man seems pleased. 9 months and 2 weeks old and his hair is finally trimmed. He's a handsome little thing. Maybe someday the kook will have some hair to cut too. I'll probably be able to make a hair baby out of all of the little man's hair trimmings before that happens.

the most WONDERFUL time

Welcome to the smattering of colors, animals, vintage Christmas, and yarn decor that is our living room. Oh how I love to decorate for the holidays! I am all about Anthropologie, handmade, and vintage ornaments and the random special animal ornaments from stores here and there. I dream of someday having a Christmas tree filled entirely with animal ornaments, but that will have to be when I have a mansion with a tree in every room someday because I can't give up my non-animal vintage ornaments. Let's see... I'd have an animal tree in the den, a vintage tinsel tree in the pretty entertaining living room (the parlor? I don't know the formal names for these things), a candy/cake/popcorn tree in the kitchen that I can snack off of all season, and.... yeah, that's all I'd need.

I started my holidays nice and early this year, November 1st. I have a friend who puts up her decorations November 1st every year and this year I decided to join her. Christmas music was a'blaring in our house while all the kids in the land still had Halloween sugar highs. I haven't regretted the early start one bit. I love Christmas and feel like there's never enough of it to enjoy when it takes me a week or so to decorate and I'm rushing around getting presents the whole season. This year I wanted to be done with shopping and decorating early to soak it all in and I am! I have half of one present left to buy and then I am done. I'm usually a week of shopper, so this is a major accomplishment. And I did most of my shopping in sweats in front of the computer. As much as I hate the internet sometimes because it's such a time sucker, I loooove the invention of online shopping. Not having to leave the house and go to 100 different stores with the kiddos in tow? Amazing! The kids threatened to ruin with season with a crazy horrible cold before Thanksgiving. That put a major halt in shopping and celebrating and sanity, but luckily they were well just in time to go to Thanksgiving with hubby's family. After a few days of recovery from the madness of a 3 week crazy cough, I was back in Christmas mode. I still have some Christmas decorations I want to make (check out my holidays Pinterest board to see some of them), but if I don't get to them this year, I'll survive.

How is your Christmas coming along? Any decorating left to do? Are you an early shopper or December 23rd evening shopper?