For anyone that may have gotten the impression that I'm above bribing people to read my PTR, you are wrong.
In order to entice people out of possible lurkdom, I have decided to post some pictures. People like pictures on PTRs, right? These don't
necessarily have anything to do with my trip in December---but they can be loosely related because they are pictures of our tree/ornaments/etc. from last Christmas.
I don't know if I mentioned in the beginning of the PTR, but I
love Christmas. It's my all-time favorite time of the year. Between the decorations on the houses, the shopping, the hustle and bustle in the stores, decorating the tree, baking cookies---I love it all.
For those of you that may have been reading and asking yourself "so---I wonder what Ann's Christmas tree looked like last year?", I have decided to post some pictures.
I collect Waterford ornaments. They're so pretty and just really put me in the holiday spirit when I get to unwrap them each year. For anyone who thinks they look pretty---take a look at your local Marshall's or TJ Maxx if you'd like to buy some (around Christmas). They have them for $5, $10, $15 each, etc. rather than the $40 you may pay at MACY's. GREAT DEAL.
One of my faves.
Right now I have about 50 Waterford ornaments and I've only been collecting them for 3 Christmas seasons
Let's not tell DH exactly how much I have spent. That'll be our little secret, okay?
I also collect Steinbach ornaments. For all of you Disney lovers---you may have been these ornaments in the Christmas shop in Germany in Epcot. They are in little white boxes and are hand crafted. They're wooden and remind me of the vintage ornaments I would see hanging on my Grandparents' tree. Right now I only have about 10 or so because a lot are weird designs like bumble bees and...
sheep?
Weird, I know.
Lastly, I always get an ornament from every vacation we take (or I try to). Disney is no exception. Last trip in 07 I purchased a set of little chubby versions of the Fab 5 like this one.
This year, I'm going to try to get a personalized Christmas ball. From what I understand, around Christmas you need to give them at least a few days to get those done---so the plan is to order them on our first day (Dec. 12) while we are in DTD for Cirque du Soleil and get them delivered for our departure on Dec. 18.
Here is a picture of our finished tree last year. To give you an idea of how big it was, that big red ball ornament right in the front is about the size of a person's head. The tree touched the living room ceiling and took up a whole corner of the living room
with the back half of the tree trimmed down.
I decorate it with lights, red wooden beads that look like cranberries, all of my ornaments and then top the whole thing off with red Yankee candle tree candles (the kind that are a wick that's dipped to make two hanging candles)
like these (borrowed from the internet)
and tin icicles since we can't use tinsle because of the cats.
So without further delay, here is our tree.