Christmas 2016

Merry Christmas!!

Okay, okay, I'm a few days early, but we're officially on Christmas break and our family celebrations start today so we are definitely in the Christmas mood!

Overall I'm happy with how our Christmas card turned out this year, but I'll be the first to admit that it's a little spastic!

We took the main picture back in September, during Arden's 1st birthday session. We've been on a tight budget lately so we couldn't justify booking another photo session a few weeks later, just to get a Christmas card photo, so I earmarked this cute one for our Christmas cards. Yes, it was still about 100 degrees in Dallas at the time - that's why Arden is in a romper!

Well a few weeks after we took this photo I found out I was pregnant! We had snapped a few pictures of Arden in her big sis shirt for our pregnancy announcement (which just happened to be around Halloween so pumpkins were out in full force!), and so I decided to just include those pictures in our card too.

So there you go, pictures from summer + fall...all on our Christmas card!

Our tree this year (we always get a live one!):

We decided to do a $5 Christmas with Taylor's family this year - that's right, limit of $5 per person (think stocking stuffers). At first it seemed impossible, but the more time we spent brainstorming, the more fun it became to come up with creative ideas. It was also pretty liberating to be honest. There wasn't the pressure of spending tons of money on dozens of gifts for everyone in the family - as previously mentioned, we've been on a tight budget since Arden started daycare & having a small spending limit definitely helped take the pressure off! We decided to take the same approach for my family & we really did have a blast trying to come up with $5ish (but still good!) gifts for everyone.

Stocking stuffer-sized gifts tend to be small though, so the majority of gifts under our tree are pretty tiny. It still looks full though!

Surprisingly enough, Arden has done a fabulous job of not touching the Christmas tree. We decided early that we just wouldn't let her touch the tree without us there (we didn't want to spend a month worrying about her pulling it down on herself!). In the beginning she was actually a little intimidated by the tree and would just point and it and then point at the trees outside; she was definitely trying to connect why there was a tree in the house! She's become more brave since then, but will usually just point and then get one of us to come over if she wants to touch a branch. She hasn't touched any of the presents either. I'm sure in future years she'll be the one showing little brother how to pull off ornaments and shake gifts, ha!

Every year Taylor and I go out and choose a special ornament or two for the year. Here are our 2016 ornaments. This one is a beautiful glass ball - it catches the light so prettily!

This is our first photo-ornament & I love it! We may need to get one every year. Again with the pumpkins, I know! We just felt like being pregnant with #2 was kind of the big deal of 2016 (and so far these are the only pictures we have of Arden in that shirt!).

And 1 cute silver reindeer. We love reindeer. So cute. So festive.

Lastly, Arden made her first ornament in school, a little popsicle stick Christmas tree! We'll probably hang on to this one!

We're pretty minimal Christmas decorators around the house (we didn't even put up lights outside this year, oy!), but we did put up our stockings. I love seeing all the Christmas cards that come in from friends and family!

And yes, we do need a stocking for baby boy. Gotta decide on a name first!