Christmas Decor!

I hope that everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! We had a good time with my parents, and the Thanksgiving meal went off without a hitch. I plan on blogging about that soon, but I'd like to post pictures and the camera is currently buried somewhere in Shawn's hiking backpack. I think I'll let him get that out. :-)

I think I mentioned on here that Shawn and I decided to decorate for Christmas before my parents came, so we actually did it a couple weeks ago. We had a couple reasons for doing this. First of all, we wanted my parents to be able to see our place when it was all decorated for the holidays! Second, we won't actually be here on Christmas, so we wanted a few extra days to enjoy the decorations before we leave on our Christmas vacation. And finally, we didn't decorate at all last year (since our wedding was just 4 days before Christmas), so we were getting excited to pull out all the decorations!

Since Shawn and I didn't live together until after we returned from our honeymoon, this is obviously our first time decorating together for Christmas! We mostly used decorations that we already owned, although I did purchase a 6.5' prelit tree for us! This is the biggest tree I've had in an apartment since I moved to Colorado 8 years ago. Even though it's fake, I love it.

Shawn put his "fish tree" up on the mantle. What you can't see in the picture is that all of the ornaments on this tree are either fish, people fishing, or camping. We still may be adding lights or ribbon to the garland on the mantle, too.

And finally, this is the wreath I bought for our door. I just added the ribbons...which were actually originally purchased last year as potential wedding decor and then never used!
Oh...and in case anyone reading this has a brilliant idea for me...I'm still in search of an Advent wreath. I completely spaced it until yesterday morning, when Mass started and I remembered that this is the first week of Advent. I know that I can order one online, but by the time it's delivered, Advent will be at least 1/4 over! Any ideas where I can get an Advent wreath quickly? Oh, and I did think about making one, but I'm also having trouble finding purple and pink candles. :(