Looks Great! Little Full, Lotta Sap.

I give you, the Noel Family Christmas Tree!

If you've been reading these ramblings for really any period of time, you'll know that Ellie's first Christmas is a big deal.  Ellie's first Christmas tree?  Too. Much.  Excitement.  Christmas tree day is easily in my top ten favorite days of the year - maybe even top five.  Probably top five.  As I mentioned before, we had used our artificial tree the past couple years, so we were both (all) extra excited to get a real one this time around.  We found the sweetest little Christmas tree farm just a few minutes from our house.  We spent a decent amount of time walking around, searching for the perfectly imperfect tree.  After Tyler telling me every tree I liked was too short (okay, I had only picked out two or three, but still...), we found ours!  All of the trees were super cute but fat, so we knew it would be a little out of control in our living room that has been taken over with baby toys.  As soon as Tyler got it into the house and unwrapped he said "well, we used to have a living room" - totally felt like the Griswolds.  ;)  I changed into my favorite Christmas tee, and after spending too much time untangling messy balls of lights, I ended up going with both white + colored, and I love how it turned out!  It's fun, colorful, and a little bit quirky.  We did a "ceremonial tree topping" (of course we did) and let Ellie help put on the star, which made my festive mama heart melt into a puddle.   After our monkey put up the sweetest fight against bed time that had me thinking "does she really have to go to bed??", Tyler and I watched Christmas Vacation for the first of many times this season, I'm sure. And when I was washing my face before bed, I noticed I had lots of little glitter specks in my hair.  Proof of a successful Christmas tree day.

 

 

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see I already said this, but Christmas time is seriously so much more magical (and so much better) with Ellie.  I'm SO looking forward to the next four festive weeks with my girlfriend + our little fam! :)

In other news, has anyone snagged any good deals this weekend?! I picked up pj bottoms for my sister and I from aerie (they're buy one get one free), so we can start our own Christmas tradition with Ellie this year - more to come on that soon! 

 Aside from my obsession with Baby Gap and Target, I do a lot of small business shopping, and since its Small Business Saturday, I figured I'd share a few things I've come across so far.  Little Unicorn killed it with their new line of swaddle blankets and they are all available for pre-order (as I randomly remembered at 5:30 am Friday morning and jumped out of bed to grab my credit card).  They're my favorite blankets Ellie has, and even though she is too big now and has never liked to be swaddled, we still use them almost on a daily basis.  So you're all going to think I'm completely batshit crazy, but I ordered two for our future Baby Noel #2 (who I promise is just a figment of my imagination at this point) - a boy one and a girl one.  That bison one is way too cute for a little boy, and I had the hardest time picking out just one girl one.  I ended up with another floral one, but I love both the blueberry one and the lemon one and think they'd be perfect for summer babies!! So yes, completely crazy but I figured if we never used one, we could gift it (or Ellie will totally just use them anyway?!).  

Speaking of looking into the future, I love these cake toppers from Fancy Free Finery (20% off using code SMALLBUSINESS94) and I think they would go perfectly with the theme I have in mind for Ellie's first birthday! ;) If you search the hashtag smallbusiness94, you'll find the mother load of small shop deals! The reindeer games onesie Ellie is wearing in our Christmas tree photos is from SaSea and you can get 15% off today using code merrysaturday.  They also have the cutest Santa shirts for the whole family!  Our friends at Isla Ann Inspirations are having an awesome sale through Cyber Monday!  You can save big using these codes:

•Save 20% off your order, no minimum using code: SAVE20
•Save 30% off $10+ using code: SAVE30
•Save 40% off $25+ using code: SAVE40 

 Happy shopping! :)