Deck the Walls

I typically wait until December or at least until after Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas. However, I jumped the gun this year and decorated last weekend. My rationale for this was that I didn't put up the tree last year or put out any Christmas decorations and I wanted to make sure I didn't run out of time this year. It's also my house and I can do what I want.

Justin and I bought this tree in 2003 for $16.88 at Wal-Mart. That was full price. We were proud of it since it was our very first Christmas tree together. We're still proud of it! We bought a couple of boxes of balls for the tree that year and have slowly purchased a few more on sale at the end of the Christmas seasons since then. One year, Justin really wanted a box of deep purple balls and I tried so hard to talk him out of it because I didn't think they would look good with our deep red balls. He insisted and I eventually relented. Those deep purple balls really look good and blend with the deep red ones.


We also hung some framed pictures on the dining room wall this weekend. These are some toile prints from my grandparents' house and I think they look fabulous in our dining room. They are very understated and so classy, almost like they were made for this room.

Justin is so precise when he's doing something like hanging pictures on the wall or cutting wood. He measures, measures, and measures, and then makes the cut or hammers the nail. This task was no exception. He drew a sketch, measured the wall and pictures, and calculated how much space we wanted between the pictures. He made marks on little pieces of masking tape and then hammered (after removing the tape). The result: perfectly hung pictures that are level and absolutely gorgeous! We also only have one hole in the wall for each picture.