Tree Time

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, and we're heading into December (can you believe its here already?? I mean, we were just snorkeling in the last post!), it is now time for me to start decorating the house. An odd fact about me: although I'm an Interior Designer, I'm not too into decorating my house for holidays! Maybe that will change as I get older, but the past 2 1/2 years that Matt and I have lived together, I haven't done much in the holiday decor department, unfortunately. In fact, this year is the first year we will even have a Christmas tree! I think we've never bothered putting one up before, because each year we go home to Chicago for the holidays and live with our parents. By the time we came back to our house in California, Christmas would be over. However, because we just moved to Japan in September, this is going to (sadly) be the first year both Matt and I have ever been away from home for Christmas. I already know that this holiday season is going to be really hard for the both of us - especially me. When there's no snow on the ground, you're away from your family, all the Christmas songs you hear are being sung in high-pitched Japanese voices, and you're still going swimming in the ocean on weekends, its a little hard to get in that "Christmas Spirit", if you know what I mean. I decided to make the best of the situation and actually put up our very first tree this year, and I really enjoyed unpacking all of the sentimental ornaments we've received over the past 4 years from family that we've never been able to use until now. After I put on some old Christmas tunes my sister and I used to listen to while decorating the tree each year with our mom, I even thought I saw some snow falling outside the window at one point - there wasn't, but I like to pretend:) And, I only got sad once during the whole tree decorating, but I think it was because I had listened to "Hard Candy Christmas" by Dolly Parton a few too many times in a row.

Anyway, rewind to right before I put up the tree. I had just cleaned the house and remembered that some of our family and friends had asked us awhile back right when we moved in to post some pictures of the house once we got all of our furniture in and set up. Well, I sort of forgot about it until this day, and decided to take advantage of the clean house and go one step further - a video tour of our building/inside our house so that everyone could feel like they've been here! As I talk about in the video, the house isn't complete (we're still looking for a few tables and office furniture, etc.) and I think that is why I haven't put up any photos of it yet. Also, keep in mind that I was dressed for a day of putting up a Christmas tree, NOT a night out on the town, so ignore the bum clothes and hair, please! :) The videos were too large to post on the blog, so I had to upload them to YouTube. Click the links below to open YouTube in a new window, and if you are not able to view them for any reason, please write a comment below and let me know so I can fix it (I put a type of privacy setting on the videos so only so many people can view them).

House Tour Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU6w5TQILRw

House Tour Part 2 (sorry about the wind near the end!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImtrB2zsKkU

And I couldn't go into all that detail about putting up our tree without showing some pics:

Now, if only I had a pet to dress up in a cute holiday outfit - I'd be set!

-C