Twas The Night Before 2011

And all though the house.... was sprinkled little green bits from our new Christmas tree that we decided to put up on New Year's Eve!  

Our old tree, the one I've had since college that will now go upstairs to make another room sparkle.

This photo actually makes it look reasonably sized.  But reality is the tree skirt is half the width of the tree and we gained 2 1/2 feet of tree....meaning that the star on top will nearly brush the ceiling.

I have had my eye on this 9" Christmas tree since November (it's 63" wide).  Paler, less bright green, and with pinecones and 1300 lights.  Yes, 1300.....it didn't look so bright in the store, but oh my!  Yesterday on a whim we ducked into the store and it was 2/3 off, so we snapped up the last one.....the floor model.  I now have cuts all over my arms (those branches are like death of a million paper cuts), but a huge tree that I can hide behind and G can't see me.  Basically we spent the entire night laughing manically while staring at it trying to imagine what on earth were we thinking.  But we're kinda in love and G keeps threatening to leave it up another month or two.  

Dinner was Indian take-away on a picnic blanket in the sitting room with some red wine.  Then we put on Love Actually, curled up and watched it until a quarter til midnight.  Fireworks were already going off all throughout the city, so we grabbed a pack of sparklers and headed outside.  We came in just in time to pour glasses of bubbly and ring in the new year with a kiss. 

I hope that today was an excellent beginning to a new year for all of you!