Deck the Halls

I have always loved Christmas. It reminds me so much of the happiest moments of my childhood and it is chalked full of tradition that I just can't help, but love it. When I was married and it was only Carl and I at our new house I was excited to decorate my house, find beautiful furnishings and show off my house to the max in all its Christmas glory.

Now that I have children the holidays take on a brand new meaning. Carl and I each have our own traditions that we want to share with our children, yet it is fun and exciting to create new traditions unique to our family. The first tradition that started the moment Erik was born is the weekend after Thanksgiving our house gets decorated. This is the last year of our artificial tree so it went up as well.

It was so exciting to watch my 3-year-old explore all the Christmas decoration and realize that it was Christmas time. I think he was a bit confused and thought Christmas was the next day, but eventually he got the idea that was a ways away and we were just decorating.

The first thing we took out were all the Christmas books and Christmas hats. The boys had so much fun trying them on and a santa hat is sitting in my car as a result. As many times as Erik wore the Christmas antlers I just couldn't get him to sit still long enough for a picture.

Then the fun began and we trimmed the Christmas tree. Erik who is three got the concept immediately and was so excited and happy to put ornaments on the Christmas tree. We had to teach him that it was only one ornament per branch. At least he coordinated.

Elliot on the other hand was just kind of going with it, but presented his own unique set of challenges. He is only 19 months old so doesn't really get the concept of Christmas yet. Also he wants to do everything his brother does and is very independent so tried to hang ornaments on the tree, but wouldn't accept help. Finally he gave up and played with them instead.

Here are a few of my traditions, some old and some new that goes on when we are decorating our house. The first is the hearth with the stocking stuck with care. Under a flat screen that you can't hide anyway. Carl gets upset because I hang family stockings instead of the one from his childhood, but sometimes you just need to let go...

This is a collection of Christmas houses that I painted when I was 16 years old. I was thinking this year of painting a new one to add to the collection. I loved to paint ceramics when I was a kid and that was a tradition in my family, we painted and made our own hand made ornaments.

Our final Christmas tree with its new shattered proof ornaments, and a few old ornaments saved from when Carl was a little boy. One of his traditions.

I have taught my husband well. He has a good eye for composition in photography, but none of the technical ability or interest. So I taught him to put the camera on the "green box" and he can take any picture he wants without all my complicated settings getting in the way. Here are a few of his pictures.

Also a note about how I photographed this scene and my equipment. Lately I have found myself using my 24-70 mm lens a lot more. Once I figured out how to control my focus I am getting the exact results I want from it with 0 blur; this use to be a challenge for me. Manually metering all my scenes instead of using AV mode has really changed my photography because I am 100% sure now when the light is off and my shutter speed is too low creating blur. Since most of this was taken at night and this room in my house has very very poor indoor lighting I had to use my flash. Instead of using straight flash I bounced it off my white ceiling and used a reflector card for catch light in the eyes. I barely modified these images  since flash photography is not that interesting to me, but I liked capturing the moment. Gotta have good images for those scrapbook!