it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

...everywhere you go.

or at least everywhere you go in our apartment!

we spent last weekend decorating for christmas, and now our apartment is full of christmas cheer. i wanted to share some with you!

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on saturday it snowed! we spent the day putting up our first decorations and then we went out for a walk in the snow at a park in maryland. this isn't the best quality picture, but i like that you can see the snow!

i think this picture is pretty cool, even though it's blurry.

that night we went to my boss' christmas party. his wife is norwegian (she just became a us citizen), and they have a norwegian christmas party every year. this is margarete (danilo's wife) singing a norwegian drinking song before taking a shot of norwegian alcohol. apparently it was pretty strong (telling by the reactions of those who partook).

Sunday, after church and a really long church meeting, we went to Butler's Orchard, a farm that has family events, such as cutting down your own tree. We started this "tradition" last year, when we thought that we were going to cut down our own tree. But then we got there and learned that it was wicked expensive...so this year we went back and watched and walked around with no expectations. it's always fun to get out of the city and watch people. especially when there is snow on the ground. and Butler's Orchard is a pretty cool place.

this is the road leading out to the store from the city.

i like this picture. it looks so still.


the road leading out to the christmas tree field. it was so muddy from the snow. otto got really dirty, but he didn't get stuck!


all the little christmas trees in a row! they had a really cool thing up at the entrance where you got your tree baled that they put the tree in and with the trunk secured and shook until all the snow was off the tree! it was cool.



maybe one day i will live in a house like this on an orchard. that would be wonderful. and our trees would be cheap trees for all.


we ended up getting our tree at lowes. it was way to cold to cut it outside, so luke ended up just cutting it in our apartment.


i really like using tree scraps to enhance the other decorations around the house. this year i bought some ribbon and made candle rings to go around the candles.

like this:


and this:


this is my international nativity set. i got this for my mom when i was in Mexico in the 10th grade because my mom collects nativity sets. little did i know that part of her plan was to give each of her daughters a nativity set when we left home. this year the set made it's first appearance in the teater home on our bookshelf.

and this is our international advent calendar. also from mom s. as a gift last year.

lastly we decorated our christmas tree and watched the santa clause. it was lovely. (especially because last year we never even got around to decorating our tree!).


also, in case anyone was wondering, our homemade angel survived the long spring, summer and fall in her box and made her appearance at the top of the tree again, in all of her orange solo cup beauty! (though, as you may notice, her wings fell off. now she's waiting for a bell to ring so she can get her wings back...actually, she's just waiting for me to cut some more out and glue them on...)

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there are lots of other things to say, but not tonight. happy december, everyone!

oh, and this, for your enjoyment. because it totally cracked luke and i up.



(yeah, you're going to have to click on that to make it readable...)