lovely branches

Tonight we got our tree! As much as a crazy environmental nut I sometimes can be, I love myself a real-live Christmas tree and the process of picking one out (which usually involves us loving the first one we see, then taking 20 minutes to scope out all the other prospects until finally deciding to go with the first one after all). The smell is something that can't be beat--although I have caught whiff (literally) of pine-scented ornaments for fake trees. That's pretty cool, if you usually go the plastic route.

Our Christmas trees are always jam-packed with ornaments of Christmases past. Homemade ones, along with my grandma Hatos' traditional yearly rounds of Hallmark picks scatter every branch, some branches even holding two or three ornaments to my parents' dismay--apparently too many ornaments is "tacky". I don't care; I always love our Christmas trees.

This year for my Hallmark ornament, I went the Harry Potter route! This may be accounted for by my extreme anticipation this July for Half Blood Prince to come out.  Yes, we choose our Christmas ornaments in July when the Hallmark Christmas ornament catalog comes out, because we are THAT HARDCORE.  I love Christmas.