Holiday cheer

♫ It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ♪ ... well, minus the snow, that is. Minnesota and the rest of the country seemed to have gotten hit with a big blizzard last week, but so far we've only had rain. Nevertheless, the holiday spirit is in the air. Mark and I got our tree last week and had fun decorating it with ornaments old and new. We recently acquired some of Mark's grandparents' old ornaments. I also have all of my childhood ornaments from my mom... it's hard to believe all these years have drifted by. A couple of my old ornaments play music when you push a button, and I was really amazed that they still work! I pushed the button on one such cute little kitty cat ornament (Disney's Oliver, of Oliver & Co.) and he froze on single note - uh oh. We thought that certainly he would cease in the night, but how we were wrong. The next morning, he was happily (annoyingly) beeping from his niche in the tree. When we came home from work - still going. He must have an Energizer battery inside! Mark couldn't take it anymore, and hung little Oliver in the closet where, might I add, he is STILL making racket 5 days post-button-pressing. Haha :)

Oliver, our adorable monotone ornament!

We're ready for Christmas!

Yesterday we had Mark's boss's Festivus party, and we decided to bake Christmas cookies. I invited Shruthi over, who had never made Christmas cookies before. She was a great assistant and the cookies turned out simply delectable! Mark even helped me decorate them :)

Decorating the spritz trees


Shruthi's delicious handiwork

Turns out Mark is quite the decorator... Check out his elf!