Merry & Bright!

Today we decorated our house for Christmas. First, Paprika had her first day back at preschool. When I walked into school with her, all the kids started jumping around her yelling, "Yea!!! Paprika's here!" Paprika brought stickers for everyone, and they all really liked that. She was only gone a week, but I guess in 3 year old land, that is an eternity. It was an exciting morning for her.



When we got home after preschool, we started on the Christmas decorating fesitivites. We hung the lights on the tree, and Paprika hung the ornaments (all on the lower third of the tree). Paprika and Ginger were both pretty excited by all the decorations and lights.



We had hot spiced cider, egg nog, and listened to Christmas music...all the old favorites like Sinatra singing "Jingle Bells" and Dean Martin singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" (love that one). I put lights on the banister and Mr. Mustard hung the stockings by the fireplace.



We are using the same little Christmas tree that we bought at Target on clearance for $10 years ago. We got it for Paprika's first Christmas, so this is our fourth year with it, and now I guess it's become sort of a tradition. Every year we say we're going to get a new one...a live one...but we can't part with this little Charlie Brown tree.



Even this year, Mr. Mustard said, "well, maybe this could be our 'bonus tree' that we put upstairs. But then we'd have to get a whole new set of ornaments, all new decorations..." (I think this is the same conversation we had about it last year). So in the end, we just always stick with the one we've got!



After we set up the tree, we did a craft project together. We painted our own ornaments to hang on the tree. Paprika painted her Santa ornament red, yellow, and blue all at the same time- which of course made it brown! I still think it's pretty adorable, though, and you'd better believe it will be hanging on the tree front and center. :-) So, that was our day today. As you can see from the pics, it was quite a giggle-fest!