christmas! yes!!

i never used to be a holiday-decorator. i owe my enthusiasm all to drea smith. she's one of my many past roommates who first introduced the concept to me. one year i came out into the living room to find an explosion of fake leaves covering every possible surface, compliments of drea. i hated it. i thought a plastic tree had reached its branches in our windows and thrown up. it was cluttered, it was messy, it was just plain out of control.
that was one extreme... we had conversations about it and came to compromises... but then christmas came around and she introduced me to the natural way of decorating. it turns out that the piney smell of evergreen and trimmings on wreaths and swags and themed decor is actually very soul-satisfying.
now i'm going on my 3rd year of loving decorating for the holidays and i think the new attitude is here to stay.

nick and i didn't pay too much attention to the trunk on this tree when picking it out until trying to get it to stand up... very challenging when it's shaped like an 'S'. next year we will definitely be aware! without going into too much detail, let's just say we've 'put up' our tree at least twice already. :-)
i don't like how a picture of the whole tree misses out on the pretty details, so here's a few of my favorite ornaments, up close and personal...




this was right after putting our tree up for the second time so nick wasn't feeling the holiday spirit as much... but he recovered eventually.

the cats keep getting my little berries and playing with them. annoying.

we're sad to miss visiting family this year, but also really anticipating our first christmas together and all the traditions we want to create... it's going to be so much fun! and as much as i love family, it's going to be really nice to not be traveling. it seems like a break with driving in it usually needs another break afterward just to recover!
not this year. two solid weeks of resting and relaxing.
i can't wait.

the nativity set

the main project the branson high school art club has been doing this semester is repainting this nativity scene. when set up, it overlooks downtown branson from the cliff way up high above the taneycomo river.
we had them laid out in bits and pieces on the tables in our art rooms and painted them with oil paints (losing several brain cells in the process). it was quite a task, but it turned out pretty nice. the place at which they set it all up is only a couple blocks from our house. nick and i went for a little walk on thanksgiving day to check them out. it was such a perfect, beautiful, sunny day, it's hard to imagine even though it was only last week! branson has definitely left behind the idyllic fall weather and encountered full-blown winter head on, darn it all.

the little-publicized sneaky wiseman who almost got joseph with his shank.

for being the star of the show, jesus is looking rather... tiny?

ah, jerusalem. just as i've always imagined it.

this cement pad overlooking downtown is the spot where nick and i went on our very first date. you can see the back sides of the nativity scene in front of us.

we set up our christmas tree on sunday! but that's a story that will have to wait for another day.

it's finished!!!! (or at least looks that way...)

from this...

to this...

to this!!

well 5 weeks later, our bathroom looks like a normal bathroom again...
there are still some plumbing issues that nick's in the process of resolving. since he's not a plumber it's been trial and error but he's figuring things out. he's a capable fellow.
aside from nick's pipe tinkerings, we also need to find the studs to screw the trim in (it's just tacked up right now...), figure out where the toilet tank is leaking from and fix it, attach the sink to the wall and caulk around everywhere (trim, sink, tiolet, etc.). despite it looking finished, there's still a long month of 30-minute jobs ahead of us...

pretty much every part of this room has had something done to it now. we even replaced the toilet flushing mechanism (whatever it's called) and got a new shower head! the old one was ridiculous.

somehow it seems bigger to me, which shouldn't be since the color's darker than it was... but maybe it's the tumultuousness we've been in for so long being transformed into nice and organized, making it seem roomier.

despite the list of things we still need to do to it, there's still something great about having it appear put together anyhow.
more peace of mind.