Christmas Cards and Our First Tree

There was only time this year to accomplish a couple of Christmas-related things. But the big one is definitely the one I am most happy about. We got our first Christmas tree!

We'd never bothered getting a tree in the past because we don't usually spend Christmas at home, and when we were renters we didn't want to have to worry about storing a fake tree and ornaments. But my husband always promised that when we bought our first house, we could finally get a tree. Just looking at it in the corner of our family room has made me so happy the past few weeks, even if it's only for 15 minutes while I scarf down dinner, only to have to go back to work for the rest of the evening.

Our kitties have been loving sleeping on (and messing up!) the quilt batting I used for a tree skirt. Next year I plan to make a prettier tree skirt that will stay in place better. I've got all of the supplies I need, but it just didn't happen this year.

We already had some ornaments that my mother in law had gifted us the previous year, but I couldn't resist buying a handful of woodland creature ornaments to fill in the tree, along with some basic ball ornaments. The deer and owls are my favorite.

For the ribbon, it is just two spools of white ribbon I already had on hand, and I just twisted them around the tree, and tucked the ribbon spools between bottom branches on the back side, so I can just easily wrap the ribbon up when it's time to take the tree down, and use it for something else if I want.

Next year we'll get a real tree topper, some more ornaments and maybe even have some presents to put under the tree (our present to ourselves this year obviously wouldn't fit!). But that's the beauty of decorating a Christmas tree year after year, it gets to evolve and grow with you.

The only other thing I had time for this year was making some Christmas cards....this week. I was going to make them on Sunday, but was trying to get over a cold, and laying on our new couch sounded much more enticing. So I knocked these out over a couple of evenings earlier this week, with the help of my Silhouette machine. Luckily I only had about 20 to make, since I was just sending them mostly to close family. Hopefully they all arrive by late this week or on Monday!

I really am loving the Silhouette machine, and can't wait to learn how to use it even more in the near future. After the second week of January my work crunch time ends, so in the meantime I'll be brainstorming future projects.

Did you do any last minute holiday crafting, or make your own cards this year?

And to anyone who is traveling this weekend or next week, safe travels and merry Christmas!