It's time for Christmas

Our first Christmas in the mission field and we decorated our little apartment with many "gifts of decor" from our friends... Our wonderful Relief Society President, Sister Merpaw, who always takes such good care of us, couldn't stand that we wouldn't have any Christmas decorations, so she gave us some... First, our wonderful 2 1/2 ft. tree that is Fiber Optic! The tips of the branches change from green, to white, to red, to pink, to teal.... it reminds me of the tree my parents used to have when I was in high school. (it was an aluminum tree with a color wheel at the bottom that would change the whole tree to blue, or green, or orange... ha!) But we love our little tree!It has one little ornament on it... we took the picture we sent out with our Christmas card & had it put onto an ornament at Walmart... so we would have a remembrance of our first Christmas in the mission field together! Sister Merpaw also gave us a few other decorations... A cute snowman doorknob hanger and a Merry Christmas wall-hanging.and a cute little santa for the end table...We've hung our stockings with care...from the pass-thru window into the kitchen. We have two elders from Hawkesbury (an hour away) who come to work in Cornwall once a week and they spend the night at our apt. They come one week on Thursday night and the next week on Sat. night. Since they will be here for Christmas Eve & Christmas Day, we decided that they needed stockings too! (LOVE that dollar store!) Then we got a few gifts to decorate with... Misty sent us a present to open right away and a present to open on Christmas.. Can you believe it? A CRAFT project from Misty!!! I KNEW she had it in her! So we put up her NOEL letters on the top of our kitchen cupboards... you can see them the minute you walk in the door:

and, our Zone Leader, Elder Pistorius, gave us an advent calendar that his mom made & sent for all the missionaries. It is made with Hershey Kisses. Each day you cut off a kiss and it has a scripture on it, having to do with the Christmas story. So cute! What a great mom!

Lastly, I ordered a cute little gold metalic vinyl lettering for the wall... it helps take up a lot of space!

So, this is what that whole wall area looks like now... Oh, also notice the small nativity we got at Walmart - $4.95 on Black Friday.... it's on the credenza in front of the flowers on the left - I figured we really SHOULD have some spiritual part of Christmas represented - Dad figured it was the cheapest nativity (out of all the many) that he's ever had to pay for! ha!
So, we are all set with our little decorations for Christmas! We also put up some tiny white lights in our front windows too... 'cuz you KNOW how Dad LOVES to put up lights!!! Anyway, it all seems very festive for us!