On the first day of Christmas...

My true love gave to me
A North Carolina Fraser Fir tree!

Sorry, I had to. You have to admit it was clever.

Today was the big day for our Christmas decorating celebrations. Our adventure began with a stop at a little nursery near our house to price some trees after reading about the North Carolina Fraser Firs. (Apparently they're the best Christmas tree. They had me at "good needle retention.")

Next, we swung by the bank to deposit the paltry little check from our insurance company to cover a teeny tiny portion of my wisdom teeth extraction cost, and then we hit up Target to supplement our meager decoration supply. It's slowly growing! I was very thankful to be married to a geek, because he was totally willing to spring for LED lights this year. LEDs are an energy-efficient alternative to regular Christmas lights. They're also super bright, they last a really long time, and they burn much cooler than normal lights. Obviously we're LED converts now...

So on we went to a cute little Christmas Tree lot at Brier Creek Commons where we found a really good looking Fraser Fir at a decent price, and excellent customer service to boot. After last year's transportation debacle with our Christmas Tree, we decided to just fold down the seats and put the tree in the Prius this year. It worked just perfectly, too! Jonathan carted the tree inside and it was up in a snap. I think it really helped that the tree lot people (Parker's Tree Farm of NC) trimmed the bottom of the trunk so it was nice and even. Hooray!

I then spent the afternoon and evening decorating while listening to the Christmas Song (Dave Matthews) station on Pandora. (So far, this station gets two thumbs up for me because they haven't yet played "Last Christmas" by Wham.)

We hope you're all getting in the Christmas spirit! I've uploaded a handful of pictures to flickr for the curious.