It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

With Christmastime upon us, Stephen and I finally decorated our apartment in honor of Christ's birth!  Thankfully, Stephen's family always went and purchased a real tree every year - and when I say a tree, I mean a tree...it was always at least 12 feet tall!  With that being said, my cost-conscious husband is a sucker for a real Christmas tree which makes this girl REALLY happy!  So, I had done a little internet research on the cost of real trees here in the Windy City and we found that they were pretty comparable to trees in Lexington.  We were all set out to purchase it one Monday night - we knew it was going to be at least 8ft and a Balsam Fir - the most aromafilled of the bunch - and then Stephen's phone rang.  It was his friend, Dennis who told us that he had a fake 9ft tree that he couldn't fit in his apartment and it had been taking up space in storage for the past couple of years and he asked if we wanted it...a free tree?!  Who can turn that down?  While it has some things going against it (1. it's FAKE, 2. it's not prelit, 3. because it's not prelit you have to put each branch on individually, and 4. We're not so sure that it is truly 9ft tall) it had one thing going for it: it was FREE!  So we decided on no real tree this year, but we still like the results:

and a few meaningful ornaments:

I got this at my FAVORITE Ornament shop at Fayette Mall in Lexington: Santa's Pen...I love them and end up spending way too much money there and justify it because they're all presents.  I'm a sucker for personalized ornaments.

This one's for Stephen!  My mom got these for him last year and I knew that they would soon adorn my Christmas tree :).  I must say that despite their poor performance this season, Stephen still loves them so much that I'm thankful for the 2 little Steelers Nutcrackers on our tree.

Though themed trees are really pretty and I like them so much, I really love ornaments with sentimental value and memories attached to them.  Our tree is a hodgepodge of ornaments, each with their own memory or story attached to it.  This ornament represents a new set of memories.  I've decided that I'm going to purchase a "Chicago" ornament for each year that we live in Chicago.  Evidently I wasn't the only person at Macys looking for a Chicago ornament and I had to venture to the suburbs (okay, that wasn't the only reason I went to the 'burbs) to snag this little guy: "Our 1st Christmas in Chicago" Together Ornament :).

This ornament came as a wedding gift from my old coworker and good friend, Tammie and her daughter Sydney.  I think that these s'mores ornaments are so cute!

Sticking with the s'mores theme, I love this one!  This is from one of my students from last year whom I loved so much!  Her name was Brook but I fondly referred to her as "Brook-y" which I'm sure drove her crazy but she responded to it, probably just humoring me :).

This is an ornament with a picture of my class from last year.  Teaching (especially at my school) is one of the things that I miss the most.  I loved my class, I loved my coworkers and I love teaching.  I definitely can't wait to get back into it!

The whole reason why we celebrate; because of this powerful, mighty little guy:

Now I don't want to be misleading, Jesus probably didn't look like this, and Mary and Joseph probably didn't look like this either but I did think this Nativity was sweet so I put it out every year to remember the reason for the season.

"And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there..."

I purchased the prelit garland from Target for $8 on sale and then I purchased the container of ornaments (also at Target for $15) and had so much fun using them throughout the apartment to decorate:

and lastly, even our "Salt Covenant" received a little Christmas attention

So that is our living/sitting room Christmas transformation!  Stay tuned tomorrow for some dining room pictures :)