i have a real thing for christmas. i got to make a trip home to fort wayne from boulder to decorate the tree at my parents' house, and here's a tiny baby bit of what christmas time looks like at our place. we always put up a HUGE real tree, and tree-decorating is an allday process full of egg nog, classic christmas music, and my fabulous organizational skills at unpacking boxes and repacking them back into the closet!!!

i was doing a search for something in a closet upstairs... behold what i found there, one of the things that makes my dad a total badass (that's a master's national championship jersey, in case you're wondering):


christmas is a big deal, i told you. my parents instilled in me this weird love for all things antique when it comes to christmas. when my grandmother (who was a saint) passed away, we got all of her antique ornaments and they are some of the most cherished things in my family.


this is the aluminum foil star that was atop the tree every year since my dad was a little boy:


we have a thing for the pickle ornament in my family; the first one to find the pickle on christmas morning opens the first present. as i am bad at seek and finds (and bad at functioning in the morning), i usually lose this game. also, a nice side note... my grandfather planted a walnut tree when my dad was a kid, and it only ever bore ONE walnut, and then the walnut tree died. my grandpa painted that one walnut gold and hung it on the christmas tree. it still goes up every year on our tree.








my mom's choir boys, always a christmas staple!!






a great weekend.

i convinced the roommates yesterday to take a trip to the denver art museum for the day (it was free admission day, no less!) the boys decided that we should start roommate field trips (which i love!), and the first one was a smashing success. the highlight of the trip was making our own postcards in the western art exhibit which are now the first pieces of art to grace our refrigerator. yes, it was an activity meant for small children, and yes, we did sit next to several children whose drawings were notably better than mine. stay tuned for the next field trip, but enjoy this one for now:



















feeling more at home every day.