Getting ready for Christmas

There are so many things to do before Christmas, and having a little person that simultaneously needs fun things and takes my free time has only made it more challenging this year!  Because I knew there would be a lot of demands, I started my knitting projects way early this year.  The two ones I wanted to accomplish the most was a "Weasley sweater" for Willa, and a stocking that she can have for years to come.  Since I started in October I was able to get both done, woohoo!

I think I have an unhealthy fixation on the letter W

On December 5 we attended the Greensboro Lights Festival downtown since our company holiday party was at the same time in the office.  All of the activities were free and open to the public, and we had a good time walking around with her in the carrier until the crowds got to be too much.  Here are some highlights:

Willa's first time sitting with Santa, she was totally calm if a little bewildered

Remembering her affinity for bands, we made sure to stop and listen to the 

local high school's brass band play Christmas carols

Who doesn't love giant holiday wind socks?

They made fake snow for the little ones, who clearly should have been warned that 

it was made of soap suds, and therefore not the tastiest stuff ever!

I was worried about how Willa would do with a tree this year.  I always love to get a real tree, both for the smell and for the ritual of choosing just the right one.  However, our little miss loves to put anything she finds on the floor in her mouth, including (and especially) dog hair and little bits of paper.  I just knew that I would spend a decent amount of time chasing her down and prying needles out of her mouth if we got a real tree.  I briefly considered an artificial tree for this reason, but then I realized that since she is just learning to walk and steadies herself on anything within arm's reach, she would be likely to topple the thing onto herself.  Thus, I took this year to experiment with a tree alternative.  I always loved the trees made out of book arrangements, and when Jeremy suggested using our built-ins in the living room, I jumped at the chance to play with it.  Behold, the result:

I grabbed every green book in the house, a couple of baskets, a stack of Real Simple magazines, and some white bowls/bud vases to assemble a rough outline of a tree

Then we added our favorite ornaments by wedging them between stacks and pages, on top of vases, and from light clips I stuck to the front of the shelves

And here it is all lit up!

I think it was a nice compromise, although I look forward to next year when she is (hopefully) old enough to be safe with a regular tree.  If not, we can always bring this out again, it was quite easy!

The last big thing to accomplish this year was the first year I got to play with taking pictures for our first family Christmas card.  I bought her a pair of red and white striped pjs for just this occasion and scoured Pinterest for cute ideas.  I really liked pictures of babies with lights, so I took these:

No, she didn't actually eat the light.  I swooped in right after I snapped this!

Why do I have to do this, Mom?

We ended up choosing two different styles of Christmas card because I just couldn't decide between the two,  Hopefully if you are reading this you got to see at least one of them!

So that's my super long post on Christmas preparations.  Get ready for the even longer one on actual Christmas celebrations!