It’s (finally) beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Today is supposed to be a Recipe of the Week day (with some yummy vanilla spritz cookies) but since I left the recipe at home, I decided to share a ton of few photos of the Christmas-y touches that are around our apartment these days!

I’ll admit, we were pretty slow to get on the holiday decorating bandwagon this year. Partially because Brian just didn’t want them up early, and partially because we both work way to darn much! But, they are up, and I’m pretty happy about it.

Obviously, one of the biggest endeavors is the tree. We go for real trees, although I’m sure if it weren’t for me Brian wouldn’t even bother. Oh well. Here’s this year’s pine:

All of our lights are not blue and green- I kept trying to get a better shot that showed the red, yellow, and orange, but it never really worked. Brian rattled off some reasoning about the color spectrum and light, but I got bored and stopped listening! Regardless, I think our tree looks perfect in our living room. And the garland? Yep, that is expired film. Gotta love living with a photographer! I said we should add some tiny notebooks (or Filofaxes) for me 🙂

Here’s the tree this morning with a few of the presents I spent the weekend wrapping under it. Definitely completes the look.

Unfortunately, here’s what my living room looked like when Brian came home Friday night and I was mid-present wrapping. Notice how Frankie found the one wrapping paper and ribbon free spot (where I had been sitting two minutes before).

Fortunately, the mess cleaned up very easily. Although since we’re STILL not done shopping, I’ll have to drag it all out again this week. Talk about last minute…

The Christmas tree cheer, much to Brian’s dismay, has found its way throughout the apartment. Like on our breakfast bar:

And in the guest bathroom:

Besides the trees (technically there are three in a 900 or so square foot apartment), I added a few other touches, including festive place mats on our coffee table/trunk:

A cute candy dish…

And a few folk-ish looking penguins. Penguins are definitely in my top three favorite animals list (also included are owls and turtles)! Unfortunately, I keep coming home to these guys in, erm, awkward positions. Gotta love living with a boy who is still a teenager at heart.

This year the decorating even moved outdoors! Since we moved in a mere two weeks before Christmas last year, we didn’t have very much time to plan decorations. But this year, I insisted on at least a simple strand of lights.

Nothing fancy, but it livens up our typically very cookie-cutter apartment complex.

Speaking of cookie cutters, here is some more holiday cheer that hit the apartment this weekend:

I only made three types of cookies this year. It may sound like a lot, but I’m used to my mom making at least a dozen varieties! I stuck to the traditional sugar cookies, my mega chocolate chip cookies, which I downsized using mini muffin pans, and vanilla spritz cookies, which will hopefully be featured on Recipe of the Week tomorrow.

Now I just need to find time to frost all of those sugar cookies. And time to finish Christmas shopping. And time to wrap everything. And time to make appetizers…