Deck the halls...

Lucas is so excited about Christmas this year. His excitement was contagious - we decided to up our holiday decor from last year. It wasn't too tough to do since we only had this little tree that my mom brought home from a Christmas party and lights up in the apartment we were renting.

I've been cutting out snowflakes for the last week and a half. This has been a learning process in itself. At first I was folding paper 4x into rectangles and my snowflakes turned out boxy. See the snowflake on the upper right of the window? Then I turned to my favorite resource and typed in "snowflake patterns" and found out what I was missing: the third fold should make the paper into a triangle. See the other snowflakes on the bottom half of the window? Much more like snowflakes, don't you think?

I've been using some of Lucas' artwork, with his permission of course, as well as remnant wrapping paper and colorful Christmas catalogs, which we've been receiving daily. This makes for more colorful snowflakes, since it's so hard too actually color on them after they've been cut-out.
(See the detail on this LL Bean catalog snowflake?)

This past weekend we got a tree. Even Kevin got into the Christmas spirit a little and put the lights on it (go Kevin!).

Lucas and I went to Elephant Pharmacy and bought a bunch of artisan-crafted, beautiful little ornaments, which cost an arm and a leg. I supplemented with some cheap standard silver and white balls from our local big box store. We had a great time decorating.

And we topped off our weekend with a holiday party, complete with friends and everything!