Homemade Christmas decorations

Ian and I have very few Christmas decorations, to be exact at the beginning of this Christmas season we had four Christmas tree ornaments and two strings of white Christmas lights. Jesika, my oldest sister, gave us the ornaments as a gift a few years ago, they're from REI; a tiny sleeping bag, hiking boot, backpack and tent. We like it that way, less stuff to store.
Because we have so few ornaments every I make decorations for the tree. This year I made decorations out of large silver coffee bags from Starbucks, red ribbon and cranberries. Maddie ate about half of the cranberries, very carefully nibbling off just the cranberries and leaving the string, so the lower half of the tree looked kind of sparse, but it was fun to make decorations and our tree was decidedly unique.
In addition to making tree decorations I made Christmas stocking this year out of upholstery remnants Jodi gave me. The are pretty nontraditional and I love them. They are large enough to hold a 22 ounce beer. This was pretty intentional, every year I give Ian a 22 ounce beer in his stocking and it never fits! I will never have to wrap another 22 ounce beer for Christmas! The stockings are also sturdy enough to really fill full of good stuff and hang. I have worried so many times about ripping off the loop of stockings, or the stitching coming out, that should never be an issue with these stockings.
While I'm sure our box of Christmas decorations will slowly fill over time, I just hope it keeps filling with homemade decorations that remind us of where we were when we made them and the fun we had in creating them.

First family portrait!

Bath time

Abel's umbilical cord finally fell off and he had his first "real" bath! As you can see in the progression of photos he wasn't sure how he felt about it at first, but he quickly changed his mind and decided he loved it.

Snow in Bellingham

Abel only ventured out in the snow a few times, the day it started and the day it all melted! Thought we would share a family portrait to document the event. Well, Maddie isn't in the photo, she was too excited about the snow to sit still for the photo.