It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We have started putting up Christmas decorations.

We bought a tree that was fairly small in our minds, and then we were surprised by how big it was when we took it home. The only place we could find that it would fit is in the kitchen. Getting the tree this year has been quite the ordeal. Last year we bought our little tree from Home Depot, set it up, decorated, easy lemon squeezey. This year we bought our tree from a similar store and brought it home to find that it didn't fit in our tree stand. It still had a few little branches sprouting from the bottom of the stump. So what did we do? We grabbed Clayton's super old, super dull, samurai sword, took the tree outside, and tried to fix the problem ourselves. Well the sword broke after a couple of swings, which to be honest I was kind of expecting, and we ended up trying to saw off the branches with a pocket knife. After an hour of setting up, we finally got the tree to fit in the stand at a slightly crooked angle. That's an easy fix though, just lean it against a wall :).

This year I want to do mostly natural tree ornaments. So other than the lights we already put on the tree, everything else will be homemade. I'm thinking cinnamon ornaments, dried orange slices, popcorn strings, etc. I bet it will smell so great and Christmas-y when it's done.

In other fun and exciting news, I have found some treats from my past. I remember going to visit Emma's Nanny in California a long time ago. She bought these rice candies from a store for us. I found them the other day at Wegmans for Clayton to try, and of course showed Emma my sweet find. Also while at Wegmans, I found a package of roasted and salted seaweed. When I was really little, my Aunt Andrea used to give me this seaweed snack. I loved/love it. I gave Clayton some of it too, but he was not a fan.

Lastly, tonight I made Zuppa Toscana. It was a proud moment for me, which made it blog worthy. If you need the recipe, I've got a great one!