It was a very Merry Christmas

Easily the best Christmas of my adult life so far.

We put up our tree (read: Ross took it out of the box and plugged it in) before thanksgiving. I just couldn't wait any longer and Ross was okay with the idea of it going up early. We strung up lights around the apartment and up the handrail on the stairs a couple weeks later. We got really into the spirit by watching tons of holiday movies like Love Actually, Elf, White Christmas, A Christmas Carol, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and others. As soon as I got a present home I would wrap it up and stuff it under the tree to make the apartment glow a little more and to keep Ross from peeking at his presents. Ross was so sweet and got me a stocking for Christmas since we don't really do them at my parents house and I didn't have one.

It's Hello Kitty!!

I kept begging Ross to open up a present. I tried to barter gifts to open up a big one he had under the tree which was odd because I have never had trouble with waiting for christmas or being nosy with presents. He didn't budge =/ but we did open one of the candles we had gotten for ourselves because Ross got sick and it was gonna help him get better.

On Christmas eve eve I finally got Ross to open up the gift that I was most anxious for him to open.

They have an arts festival in Tempe at the beginning of December and in the spring where tons of great artists and vendors come to sell their stuff. I passed by this great booth that had ornaments you could personalize and I just couldn't pass on by without grabbing us an ornament to celebrate our first Christmas together. Hopefully we'll be able to keep on getting on ornament for each our Christmases together =)

Here was our little tree and the gifts underneath. I couldn't pick a wrapping paper for the presents this year so I opted for brown postal paper and fun ribbon. It wasn't the easiest to wrap but I like the simplicity and highlighting the beautiful ribbons.

We went to Ross' mom, Suzanne's house on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and boy did I like it there. She is so creative and has such a great eye for decoration and her house just felt like Macy's it was sooo pretty.

We went to my parents house Christmas afternoon and evening and playing a pretty fun game of White Elephant. I'm still trying to deal with the fact that I don't have a working camera (aside from my camera phone) So that is another resolution for 2011: to save up some money and buy a nice camera and find the power cord for my current pocket Nikon.

-Mari