We got our Christmas Tree!!!

Tim loves Christmas season.  He loves getting the tree right after Thanksgiving and lighting candles and reading books and watching Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings and drinking hot chocolate.  We finally got our tree today (our first tree in our new house, yea!) during a break in the rain.
I couldn't wait for Tim to come in from projecting in the garage to put the lights on, so I started myself, using my t-shirt as a "sack" to carry the lights in as I squeezed around the tree (thinking, "well I'm glad the baby isn't bigger or I wouldn't fit back here").  Tim thought it was so cute that the baby held up the lights that he took a picture.

The black shirt makes it hard, but you can kind of see my baby bump!

We also hung the stockings on the mantle, which Tim built (when we realized we needed a mantle to hang stockings on!)

Tim built this mantle from leftover shelf wood from his parents

Then I remembered some of the photography ideas I've been seeing on Pinterest, and wanted to try them out.  This is what I came out with:  

24mm, 0"5, f5.0, ISO1600

36mm, 0"5, f5.0, ISO1600

They aren't perfect.  But there's only so much you can do with a standard lens and two dogs who just want to jump at the piece of leftover taco meat that is sitting on the floor 2 feet in front of them :)  

And it was kind of fun to practice for taking Christmas light photos of the baby next year (who at ~8 months old then won't wiggle any less than these guys...)