Getting Ready for Christmas!

The weekend after our anniversary, we went to Kingsmill for the weekend, which was lots of fun!  We stayed in a suite with a fireplace and kitchen, so that was great for being able to spread out and feel a little more at home while staying at a resort.  We had a fire each night, ate a lot (3 meals were included with our package!), and enjoyed some wine from our wedding winery, Veritas.  We did manage to get in a workout on Sunday morning to counteract our more-frequent-than-usual dining.  We also went to the Grand Illumination in Colonial Williamsburg, which was lots of fun.  It's amazing how people are so intrigued by and enamoured with fireworks...thousands of people gather in the cobblestone and gravel streets, braving the cold and crowds and crazy hot cider lines, all for a 20 minute firework show.  And we go back just about every year!  We ended our evening with a trip to the Green Leafe for mug night before heading back to Kingsmill.  The highlight for Billy was a very reasonably priced mug of Mad Elf beer, which was surprisingly sweet and not too hoppy for being 11% :)

Here are a couple of firework pictures...

We love the "spray" fireworks!

This past weekend, we decorated our tree and some other areas around the house.  I always love decorating the tree, since we have a great collection of ornaments consisting of ones given to us by my mom's and my sweet friends and family members from a wonderful wedding shower right before we got married, ones we got as souvenirs from our various trips we've taken together, and ones from both of our childhoods (some of those are slightly scary and strange, though, so we look at them, laugh, and put them back in the box :)).  We also got out our large nativity set, Billy's old train, and some other decorations for around the house.  Next task - snow village.  Maybe that will happen in the next couple of nights before I head down south for Kel's graduation from Auburn. 

Here are a few pictures from around our house - more to come later!

The tree, complete with Billy's train going around it :)

We dressed up the mantle a bit with some red and gold Christmas balls in the hurricanes that usually have candles in them.  Our little Willow Tree nativity scene stays up here year round. 

Dining room centerpiece (same as for Thanksgiving but with red berries around the candles)

I added a red berry wreath on the china cabinet too (love these things...they are pretty cheap, especially at the after-Christmas sales at Michaels, and provide a subtle way to dress things up)

Decorated living room

Last night, we decorated gingerbread cookies...I didn't have any gingerbread man cookie cutters, so we used the ornament cookie cutters Billy had given me for our 2nd anniversary.  I also didn't have any red icing, so we went with blue, green, and white.  Billy turned out to be our star decorator, as the cookies I attempted to decorate were consumed almost immediately because they didn't look so good :)  I guess I've gotten a little rusty from my days of cake decorating class!  We just used half of the dough, so maybe tonight or tomorrow night, we'll have another round of decorating.