Our Tree Decor

I've been meaning to post pictures of our tree for at least a week. It seems that December is a month filled with parties, family outings, and lots of great holiday shows! Those things have been keeping us busy. I wanted to take a minute and share some of our holiday traditions with you. We love getting our tree each year. We usually get it the day after Thanksgiving and spend the weekend getting it decorated. We've had a real tree for as long as I can remember. We love them. They smell wonderful and there is something so special about spending time with your family as you pick out the perfect tree. We usually peruse all the trees on the lot before deciding on one. We used to go to a tree farm about an hour away and get our tree. However, the tree farm hasn't had any trees for the past few years (they've been waiting for new ones to grow) so we found a nice little lot near home that we've been going to for the past few years. Again this year, we found the perfect tree for our living room.

We tried to just do orange and white ornaments this year, in honor of our beloved Tennessee Vols. We found some nice orange ball ornaments but could only find one pack. That pack only had six ornaments and we knew that wouldn't be enough. We did manage to spread them out though and added some of our older ornaments that had orange in them. It worked out fine and I love this tree more than any we've had in awhile. It's very simple this year. We used clear lights, which is a break from our normal colored lights. We usually try and find a couple of special ornaments each year. These ornaments mean something to our family so we look carefully. This year, we chose two special ones that fit us perfectly. The first one is one that JennaG will appreciate:

My daughters and I love Elvis. I learned to love him as a child since my stepfather was a HUGE fan. He listened to Elvis tapes over and over and I heard them so much that I learned almost every Elvis song. I had to be a fan! We picked up this Elvis at Cracker Barrel in Beckley, WV this year. We visited my mom there for Thanksgiving and we happened to see this ornament as we were leaving.

The second ornament is just as special to us. If you read here very often, you know that we love animals and we have our fair share of pets, especially cats. We have a very unique story as to how all the cats came to live here and I've written about it many times. We get strange stray cats with little or no tail. Currently out of five cats, only two have regular tails. The others have no tail, half a tail and 3/4 of a tail. I've always heard that cats are great for stress relief. I can attest to that since these kitties do wonders for me. I love them all and couldn't imagine them not being around. So, in honor of Mr. Tumnus, Lucy, Tabbie, Jasper, and Molly, I give you our favorite ornament for this year:

We found it at Hobby Lobby in Beckley, WV this year.

 

I thought I'd throw in a few from the past couple of years. All of the ornaments pictured here are hanging on our tree this year. They all mesh well with our orange and white theme except for one. I'm sure you'll figure out which one from the pictures below.

A ballerina that is special to our youngest daughter, who used to be a ballerina herself.

A Titans ornament that is special to our oldest daughter,a HUGE Titans fan.

A UT ornament given to us by my BIL a couple of years ago.

Clan Forrester ornament. If you look closely, you'll notice a piece of our hunting tartan draped over the shoulder of the bear.

The orange balls we found in Beckley. Too bad we only found 6!

I hope you enjoyed looking at my tree. This year was all about being simple and I think we accomplished that. We have fewer ornaments on our tree than ever and I'm glad. Each one that hangs on the tree this year has very special meaning to our family and we plan to continue adding to that each year.