Christmas This or That

 Getting ready for our big Christmas celebrations this weekend with family I thought it would be fun to wrap up the week with a little Christmas This or That.  

As always here is a blank one if you want to play along! 

And here is one with my answers:

We've swapped back and forth between real trees and fake trees a couple of times but my boys have only ever known fake trees.  Our first year in this house our tree dried out so badly that all the needles and most of the ornaments were on the floor by Christmas morning. I decided it was time for a fake tree and we never looked back. This year we have 4 fake trees set up.

I like white lights so that's what we have.  We did have more colored lights around when the boys were little and that was their favorite but I've always had white lights on our tree.

I like to wrap gifts so most of our gifts are wrapped but I will put odd sized/shape gifts in giftbags too.

I rarely gift out gift cards; we usually buy actual gifts or give money-- unless the person asked me for a specific gift card.  (These are the money card holders I made for all the nieces and nephews this year)

We celebrate a fairly long holiday season since we have 4 different sides of the family we always celebrated with (both my husband's and my parents have been divorced and remarried long before we got together).  We celebrate Christmas eve with my mom's side of the family.  Christmas morning has always been just us with the boys and then around 10 we have Christmas brunch with my husband's mom's side of the family.  (My dad now winters in Florida so we don't really see his side of the family for Christmas anymore and my husband's dad side of the family celebrates the weekend before Christmas). 

Christmas morning last year

I like Christmas music but really only listen to it when I'm in the car (alone! since none of my boys are Christmas music fans) and so I had to pick movies.  I tend to watch a Christmas  movie nearly every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

With a baker in the family you know we are all about homemade treats!  We used to bake up 10 or so cookie tin assortments for extended family members that we'd see during the holidays but didn't exchange gifts with.  It was so fun and a great way to make sure we ended with a little variety of sweets too.  It's a tradition we've started getting away from though and so far this year we've only made up 2 batches of Christmas Crack... which were gobbled up in no time. 

I think we already established we're a watch a movie kind of family!  Though we do play games at 2 of the Christmas parties we go to; where we have to roll dice to get doubles and unwind a saran wrap ball of candy and gifts.

Love Actually and Christmas Vacation are on my list of favorite Christmas movies and I watch them both every single year.  We watch Christmas Vacation the day after Thanksgiving when we decorate the tree and I watch Love Actually while wrapping gifts. 

I've never been a big fan of the Grinch but we watch Elf every Thanksgiving night before bed.  It's become a tradition that my boys started and we look forward to it each year now.

We're pretty casual dressers for everything around here. That said I tend to wear a new shirt or sweater with a nice pair of jeans-- here are two of the outfits I wore last year for some of our Christmas celebrations. 

While I would love (and have pushed/ asked for many times!!) a tropical Christmas, living in CT we are much more likely to have a white Christmas.  As long as my guys don't have to go out and plow all day though I'm fine with either.   

Our first snowstorm  of the season at the beginning of December this year

Linking up with: On the Edge/ Spread the Kindness,