Ta-daa! If you click on the picture you can see a larger image.

As you can see, we decorated our xmas tree today. We decided this year to put it in our dining room, which has a nice window area so you can see the lights from outside.

Unwrapping the ornaments and all the decorations is nearly as much fun as opening presents. I have my favorite ones, of course. The paper stars Marty and I folded for our first Christmas away from home together are old favorites. That year we had a tiny tree with just those stars, and popcorn and cranberry strings. It was so pretty.

I also love the ones I got at Dank's in State College, Pennsylvania. That's an old department store that has gone out of business now. Mary and I would go when we were graduate students and buy ornaments. They had a great xmas section in the basement. We got these sets of German glass ornaments and I got a bunch of suns, stars, and moons. I love all of those.

I also have a lot of my great aunt Mamie's ornaments, the ones I remember from her tree when I was a child. She had the strangest things on the tree, like wooden spools threaded on yarn, a felt hat from the Mary Poppins doll, and old clip-on earrings. The yarn and spools ornament was on her tree when I was a baby, and I liked to play with it when I was just starting to walk. I hang it low so Ziggy can play with it now.

One more picture of the tree. I always take this shot, the tree with the lights off, and it never turns out. But it's my favorite picture of the tree. so here it is (and you can see the bigger one if you click on it).