Christmas Decorations

In October I documented the impressive and elaborate Halloween decorations around my neighborhood in San Francisco, and I mentioned I was excited to see what the Christmas decorations would be like.  Well, I don't know if I've been jogging on the wrong streets or if the professional light-hanging truck is just so back-logged with work, but the Christmas decorations have been a bit underwhelming so far.  There are certainly some pretty lights around town, but I think I am going to give those light-hanging cranes a few more days to work their magic (and make their big bucks) before I take any photos.

Instead, I have uploaded photos of our own Christmas decorations, specifically our tree this year.  I'm partial to live trees, due in part to my family's tradition growing up of buying a real tree (and bringing our cat, who helped us select the tree), but also a tradition I began after leaving the house, when my college roommate and I bought a live 5-foot tree for our dorm room freshman year.  I don't think it had many decorations aside from lights and candy-cane reindeer*, but I assure you, we were the talk of the dorm, and we had lots of visitors around Christmas to admire the tree.  After our hand-strung garland of real leaves at the onset of Fall the month before, I admit some of our visitors were probably there more to roll their eyes and see what Martha Stewart Olivia and I had gotten ourselves into this time.

Anyway, with only one or two exceptions, I have coerced my roommates over the years, and now my husband, that we need a live tree, and that the sooner after Thanksgiving we select it, the better.
This year we drove outside the city for a bit better selection, and we came home with a 7 foot Douglass fir tree.  I'm not necessarily into changing up the decorations to abide by a theme, so our ornaments are the same as last year's and the year's before, with a few additions.  It makes it fun to decorate each year, when you pull out ornaments and say, "Oh I forgot about this one--it's so cute/pretty/reminds me of ____!"  So we turned on some Christmas music last weekend and oo'ed and ah'ed over ornaments from our first Christmases (our parents have now handed them down to us), from our wedding, from trips we have taken, and crocheted and tatted ornaments from Grandma.  We have a San Francisco street car with 2011 to commemorate our move this year.  There's even a pickle ornament.

In our relatively small apartment, the tree and the two garlands on the back doors really light up the room and give off a pretty glow.  And the reflection of the tree in both windows is so pretty!

So no professionals with their lights-hanging crane for us this year, but I will let you know if those professionally-decorated houses live up to my expectations.


*Another kinda-dorky craft (at least to still be making past the age of 12), but tradition nonetheless!