Christmas Tour of Home

It's a little late for this, but the weeks leading up to Christmas vacation were so busy that I didn't get my act together soon enough to post pictures of our house decorated in time for Christmas. Well, two days back in town and I seem to have caught the plague all of the Nixes had last week, so I've been quarantined to the couch. Even though Christmas came and went, I'd still like to post about what I did to make our apartment festive in 2010.

The stockings were a gift from my mom. Aaron and I didn't have any stockings, so when we went to Texas for Thanksgiving, she made some for us. I love the green! 

My beloved nativity. Mom and Daddy gave me this when I was a little girl, and taking it out each year brings back so many treasured memories.

This year I started collecting a cardboard Christmas village.  I didn't do a great job displaying them, but at least I have a start! There's something so whimsical about the paper villages, and I look forward to adding to it for many years to come.

The ornament is from our honeymoon. We loved the bright red gondolas in Vail, which is where we spent our first Christmas.

It's a tradition in my family to get an ornament for each pet, so this year I found Olive and Toby an ornament. It was difficult to find a black cat ornament, but how serendipitous that the single ornament I found was wearing a sweater. Poor Olive Suh.

So, that's what the apartment looked like this Christmas. I loved having my own home to decorate! We'll spend this weekend, Epiphany, taking down all of the decorations and storing them for next year.

I was at home sick today, boo, and so I drank sparkling water and ate crackers. It was the life of luxury, let me tell you. While I was at home I had a chance to review some plans we've made for graduations, weddings and other travel in the upcoming months. I'm starting to feel like we need to plan holiday travel.

In 2009, Aaron spent Thanksgiving with my family because he had such a limited time frame to go anywhere. We went to the Big 12 Championship in Dallas with his family the first weekend in December, got married on December 20, went on our honeymoon, spent Christmas day with his family and then drove to spend time with my family. I am attempting to plot what holidays 2010 will look like as a married couple. I want to spend equal amounts of time with both sides of our family, especially. How does your family arrange its travel plans? Do you divide time spent with one holiday, or do you do Thanksgiving with one family and Christmas with the other? I'd love to know as we make our plans!

{source}

This year will is our first married Easter (wahoo!) and I'm thrilled Aaron will be home all weekend. Unfortunately that's not enough time to get to Texas, but even though we won't get to do the famous Anderson egg hunt it will be a special "first" for us :) We'll be dyeing eggs and I have finished working on Easter baskets tonight. Friday is stations of the cross, too. Sunday will be another battle against Easter Lilies, which I am terribly allergic to. ICK. The worst part about Easter is those awful flowers.