O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, ...

How lovely are your branches!

Kelly's Korner is hosting "Show us Your Christmas Trees"!

I love looking at everyone elses trees. You should check them out:  http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/2009/12/show-us-your-life-christmas-trees.html

Our favorite branches include homemade ornaments that we made as children, keepsakes from grandparents and our parents when we were babies, others that we collected over the years, ones that we received last year on our First Newlywed Christmas, and of course Hokie ornaments.  I know many people do a themed tree but I just love all these ornaments and all the sentiments they bring.

Matt and I got a live tree last year.  It was wonderful with fragrance but it was slightly leaning to the left.  It was a lot of work as the towels under it got wet which was a mess.  I didn't want my floor to get messed up or for us to have towels that smelled of mildew.  Getting water to it was a job too.  Oh, I loved it...I really did.  This year though, Matt and decided to get a prelit Christmas tree.  I bought some frangrant candles for the smell substitute and guess what,  I love this tree too.  Matt and I saw it at Costco and I wasn't sure but he thought it was a good one.  And, let me tell you, I need to listen to my husband more.  I love this tree too.  Matt and I think one day we'll go back to the live tree but for now, we really like how easy it was with the prelit tree.  I love everything about the Christmas tree and truthfully I don't know that it matters between live or not.  It really is the first thing every year to get me started to getting into that Christmas spirit.  It reminds me every year of the real meaning of Christmas and every year it brings back so many happy memories.

One of Matt's favorite branches is one he made when he was young and instead of putting on his parents tree, he took it to his grandmother for her to put on her tree because he was worried that they were too many of his cousin and not him! 

My grandmother bought me a Hallmark ornament every year and still does.  So, they are all on the tree somewhere.  Here's just one of them:

Matt loves his red sox ornaments.

I love my sparkly ornament right beside of of Matt's red sox ornament.

And more sparkly favorites!

Go Hokies!

One summer I was lucky enough to go to Europe.  I bought this hand blown onrament that was painted.  Isn't it beautiful?!

I also love the lenox ornament.

Lastly, some of our ornaments with our names on them and in honor of our Chirstmas together was newlyweds. 

We have a few other small trees around the house that I'll include.  However, the one with all our ornaments is my favorite!