Our Christmas Traditions

Lucas and I each came into our marriage with a number of family traditions for Christmas - problem is - they didn't really jive together very well. For example, on Christmas morning in my family, we get up and open our stockings and presents from Santa, then read the Christmas story, eat breakfast and then start working on opening the Christmas presents from each other - one at a time! In Lucas' family, they get up incredibly early, have a giant free-for-all at all the presents and stockings and its over within an hour! See how those two traditions don't exactly work together?? So over the last few years we've tried to figure out which traditions are important to us and which ones we want to start for our own family.

Here's a few of the traditions that we have that are of note:

1) We always go out to get a real tree and we decorate it together. Here's our tree with some presents underneath - it's really looking like Christmas now!!

2) As we decorate the tree we talk about where the ornaments came from - especially the ones that we've gotten as gifts or ones that we bought while on vacation ... apparently we share this tradition with the NewlyWoodwards :)

3) Eat lots and lots of lemon bread - in fact, I'll be getting a loaf in the oven later this evening.

4) Enjoy a candlelit Christmas Eve service with one of our families - this year it will be Lucas' family, last year it was mine.

5) After the service, head back to our family's place and break out our new board game. See Lucas and I began this tradition where every Christmas we buy a new game and we play it Christmas eve. So far we've collected these... and we'd love to get some recommendations - hopefully we'll have quite a collection soon!

and we'd love to get some recommendations (we are considering Balderdash for this year but we aren't convinced we'd like it) - hopefully we'll have quite a collection soon!

We haven't quite figured out what our Christmas morning traditions are going to be since we are still spending each Christmas with one of our families - but once kiddos arrive we'll figure those out :)

To Check out some other bloggers traditions visit:

Merry (Early) Christmas to Me...

I was at the mall yesterday picking up something for Lucas and while strolling the halls, decided to head into Banana Republic as they had a great 40% off sale. Want to guess what I came home with? Here's a little hint...

If you know me well, you know that bags are my weakness - I love them. So when I saw this beauty, the inner argument of "you shouldn't buy something for yourself so close to Christmas" ... "I really love it and will be disappointed if I can't bring it home" ... "what if Lucas was going to get you something similar for Christmas?" ... "but its on sale!!"

As it turned out, my inner spender won the argument and I now have a new, buttery leather bag to add to my collection!

I think the grey colour will be great for the winter but will also be totally appropriate for Spring/Fall. I love it!!

2009 Nestie Ornament Exchange

For the last three years I've participated in a Christmas Ornament Exchange with other "somewhat" newlyweds on a message board that I frequent on The Nest. Each year I've received beautiful ornaments and this year was certainly a good one!

This year I received a glass ball that is painted with white and silver Christmas trees - I love it and it matches our tree beautifully! Thanks Nikki!!

Deck The Halls!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these parts. Even though we've had our tree up for almost 2 weeks now its just been in the last few days that we've started to get the rest of the house spruced up.

Lucas and I are super excited for Christmas this year. This will be the first Christmas of our married lives (almost 7 years now) that we don't need to do the 12 hour trek to one of the parents houses to celebrate. This year we are spending some time with Lucas' parents - only an hour away - and then my parents are flying in Christmas night to stay with us until New Years. We are so psyched to not have to battle the icy roads this year!

So, the point of the story is that since we are spending the holidays at home, we are taking a bit more pride in our Christmas decorating this year. We've got the tree trimmed...


The ornaments out...

Along with a super old picture of us with Jolly St. Nick...


And in honor of being at home this year, I've taken on some new projects... lets call them DIY...

Several weeks ago, I found this picture in BlogLand and I fell in love...



I especially like the ornament-clad garland and new that I had to make something like it mine. I looked into buying something similar but figured I could try to make it myself and save some money in the process... In total, my rendition of the ornament garland cost me about $10.



What do you think?

The other thing that I tried out this year is is the word-in-frames project that's also been floating around on The Nest and in BlogLand. While most people take this project on in a small-scale fashion (in 4x6 frames), I tried it out in a much larger-scale!



I started out with 3 Ikea, 16x20 frames and a roll of Christmas-y wrapping paper. I cut out rectangles of the wrapping paper that are slightly larger than the opening in the frame. On top of that I had my neighbour (who makes signs out of vinyl lettering) make me 3 letters - J-O-Y (I'm sure they could be cut out of scrapbooking paper for an equal stunning effect). I stuck those letters on the wrapping paper and then threw them in the frames - Voila - instant Joy!


So that's what our place is looking like for the Holidays... what are you doing to deck the halls this year?

See what some other bloggers are doing by visiting the NewlyWoodwards