How to Decorate a Christmas Tree (with a 3-year-old!)

1. First, find a good place to put your tree. This year we put the tree in the back of the living room instead of the front. Here it is the day we got it (Saturday, December 6th) after we set it up in the stand. Make sure you water it ASAP and keep watering it daily or it will get its revenge by dying an early death.

2. Trick your child into thinking that he is magic and can turn the lights on and off by blowing on them as if they were birthday candles. John totally thought he had this power. He had no idea that Peter was controlling it behind him. It was so funny!

3. Have your husband string up the lights. This year it's his turn to choose the color of the lights. Peter likes colored, and I like white. So here he is putting up his colored lights.


Trying to decide if the bear or the star should hold the place of honor on top of the tree. The star won, but only because it lights up and the bear doesn't.

4. Because the lights take awhile to string up, decorate with ornaments the next night. Try to get a cute, perfect picture of your kid in front of the tree, which proves to be impossible.

5. Enjoy the finished product:

I'm happy with the tree, although it isn't decorated as nicely as some of our past Christmas trees. I didn't bother putting on things like tinsel this year. I just don't feel as festive as usual. Plus it has those blasted colored lights instead of the elegant white ones.

To make up for my Scrooginess, here are some of my favorite ornaments.

My beloved childhood Strawberry Shortcake ornament from the '80s:

Our 1st Christmas, 2002

My mom got me this when I was pregnant with John in 2004. They were all out of blondes, so she got the brunette and had it personalized with his name and the year.

My dog needed her own ornament

Year-long loyal Red Sox fans show their love with things like this:

My seashell angel, bought at a shop in Hyannis, Massachusetts during one of our annual summer vacations to Cape Cod.

I hope you're all having a nice Christmas season!

How to Choose a Christmas Tree

1. Find a good place to get it. We go to our town's Volunteer Fire Department and buy a tree (and a wreath and poinsettias) from their sale, which benefits them directly. Plus, the guys who work there are pretty cute. Not that I'm paying any attention to that fact or anything!

2. When you find a tree that you like, size it up and envision the probability of it fitting well (or not) in your house.

3. Shake the tree to see if a lot of pine needles fall off. If they do, don't get it! (We didn't do this little test last year. It proved to be a big mistake. Our tree died about a week after we got it!) If not a lot of needles fall off, the tree is probably healthy and strong. The tree below passed the test and is the one we ended up choosing.

4. Let your kid "help out" (i.e., crawl in between the trees to hide, run around, and generally have a blast!).

5. Once the tree arrives at your house and is still laying horizontally on the ground, all netted up, let the above-mentioned child get a head start on the decorating.

Next in this continuing miniseries: How to Decorate a Christmas Tree. Stay tuned!

Fall Foliage Memories

Now that it looks like THIS outside:

...I figured it was a good time to post some of my favorite fall foliage pictures that I meant to put on my blog last month. Hey, it's not officially winter yet, so it's not too late! We had an amazing foliage season in New England this year. Everyone seemed a little stunned by just how beautiful it was. My humble pictures can't do it justice, but they give a little taste of what it was like around here in Connecticut for a few glorious weeks in October.

This was the view up ahead when turning into our neighborhood and driving up the street.

The flaming orange/red tree in the center of the picture caught my eye.


(This beautiful picture of John was taken and edited by my friend Alyson.)


A walk in the woods

At the playground near our house

Trees in our neighborhood

One downfall of fall (no pun intended): All of the raking

It was such a beautiful fall. I'm looking forward to another one next year. In the meantime, on to winter!

Our Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was really nice this year. We drove up to Massachusetts to spend the day and most of the weekend with my family. The meal was delicious, and the company was excellent (which isn't always the case with your family. Or at least with my family!). We ate in the living room at a long wooden table in front of a warm crackling fire in my beloved old house in my hometown. I was thankful for all of those things.

The calm before the storm
The early arrivals to the table (Peter, my brother Ben--who is pointedly looking the other way, and my niece Hayley)

Corn and pineapple were pretty much all John would eat for his little feast. Picky eater!

My sister Elizabeth, her boyfriend Justin, Ben, and my brother-in-law Adam

John, me, my mom, my sister Jennifer, her daughter Hayley, and her hubby Adam

My brother Nathan, my dad, and Elizabeth

After the meal John danced around on the table to add a little live entertainment to the day.

Grumpy little turkey! (He was telling me to go away)

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving too. Can you believe that Christmas is only a little over two weeks away? How'd that happen!?

Technical Help and a Reward For It!

Hmmm, weird stuff is going on. I have a new post on my blog today but it's not updating on anyone else's blog. I don't know if it's because it was a draft for months or what. But in any case, it gives me a good excuse to post again tonight, which I needed to do anyway. I hope it updates now!

This is what I need help with. We had our family pictures taken a few weeks ago. They are now online. I want to put some of them on my blog, but the pictures can't be dragged or right-clicked or anything, so I can't figure out how to get them onto my blog. All there is is a jpeg code. I'm not sure if that's the key or not. I know it's possible to do because the photographer told me today that some of the high school kids she's photographed have put their photos on their Facebook pages, so somehow they figured out how to do it. They didn't scan them in either; they got them from her website because the photos have "Proof" written across all of them. Does anyone know how I can get them onto my blog? If you can help me and it works, I'll give/send you a $10 gift card to anywhere you want...Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Gap, The Children's Place, The Olive Garden, wherever you'd like.

Let me know if you think you can help! Thanks!

Ode to Fashion: Fall Edition

Note: While doing some maintenance work on my blog today, I realized that I had several drafts of posts that I started but never finished that have been waiting for their potential moment of glory--to be posted and become known to the world. I mercilessly deleted several of them (off with their heads!) because they were no longer relevant, but some made it through, and my "Ode to Fall Fashion" is one that made the cut. I started writing it on October 24th, but never finished because right around that time the economy totally tanked, which took the wind out my sails when it came to shopping for clothes. I had a lot more clothes I was planning on adding to my list here. Oh well. I want to publish what I had anyway, just to show what could have been...sigh. Without further ado, here is the fall edition of my ode to fashion, pre-recession:

October 24, 2008
Last night I spent over two hours going through my clothes, clearing out the summer stuff and getting out the winter stuff, getting rid of things, and making a list of clothes and shoes that I need or want. Then I went shopping! Online of course, because it was 11:00 at night.

Back in the spring, I did a post devoted to warm-weather skirts and dresses that I had found online or in catalogs. I LOVE skirts and dresses; I'm in a skirt almost every day in the summer. Cold-weather clothes aren't as fun for me, but they're not bad either. Here are some of the things I found that I bought last night, or want to get, or know that I won't be getting (budgets and all) but would if I could.

My best find:
I found this dress on gap.com, and I was smitten with it. It's one of the few that are actually modest. I had to get it, because dresses like this are too hard to come by. The color is beautiful too. It looks a little short but the description said that it hits just above the knee, so it should be fine. My question is, do you think this dress is too fancy to wear to church? It's 100% silk and looks more like a party dress. What do you think? Do you like it or not? Be honest. If you like it, where would you wear it?

I got this sweater from gap.com. I love the color. I live in these kinds of sweaters in the fall, winter, and early spring.

Boots are apparently all the rage this season. I like this classic pair from Covington, $125.

I've been wanting these best-selling Asian-wrap pajamas from Garnet Hill for over a year. They're supposed to be super soft and comfy. I think they're pretty too.

Isn't this skirt beautiful? Garnet Hill's Godet Border Skirt, $88 (now $59).

I Can Do Hard Things

Well, I did it. I survived a rite of passage that many people often stress out about, myself included. Last Saturday evening, I went to my 10-year high-school reunion. And, (drumroll please)...I really enjoyed it! I was afraid I would wimp out and not go. But I stayed true to my RSVP and to my friends who were going, which I'm very pleased about. It's not every day that I make smart, brave decisions!

I had a great high school class, and as a result my high school years were a lot of fun. There were less than 100 of us, and by the time senior year came along most of them kind of felt like siblings, or cousins, to me. With the exception of my closest friends, I haven't seen most of them since we graduated together in June of 1998. I've often wondered about my former classmates, so it was really cool to see so many of them again, to see what they looked like after ten years and where their lives had taken them. I had a lot of fun, despite the huge migraine I got later that night after I left (I tend to internalize my anxiety, which produces big ol' migraines from time to time). I was fine once I was at the reunion, but why was I stressed out beforehand? I guess because I worry too much--will I say the right things, what will people think of me, what if I get stuck in a conversation rut, what if I forget someone's name, etc. But there was really no reason to worry and I'm so glad that I went. I would totally be regretting it if I had given into my fears and stayed home.

I'm finally going to join Facebook so that I can stay in touch with my long-lost friends and classmates a lot more easily. And now I can't wait for the 15-year reunion. Maybe I won't stress out as much by then!

Have you ever gone to one of your high-school or college reunions? If so, how was it? Were you nervous like I was, or was it no big deal?