O Christmas Tree!

This Christmas will only be our second Christmas that we've ever spent in our own home in the last 10 years. There's been no need to celebrate in our home due to our trips to see family and several deployments separating us for the holidays. The first year we were married, we went all out and bought loads of decorations for the inside and outside of our house. They were only used that one time, thus the reason we donated everything, except for 3 items, a few years back.

Knowing that my lover will be gone next year for another deployment, and with us getting ready to leave Hawaii for a few years, we really wanted to enjoy a Hawaiian Christmas. With this in mind we decided to have not one, but two trees. We have two living rooms so it only seemed suitable to do so. I'm also adamant about doing anything and everything to make this Christmas special knowing what lies ahead for us in the new year.

I actually started planning for this Christmas last Christmas when my lover was deployed, which is a good thing. It gave me a chance to slowly add to my Hello Kitty collection so that I would have enough items for my Hello Kitty tree. Does it really surprise you that Hello Kitty would be one of the themes? I couldn't resist!! The artificial white tree is adorned head to toe, front to back, with 46 Hello Kitty items; an assortment of mini and full size Hello Kitty ornaments, plush and plastic toys, in addition to green, pink, and silver ornaments. Pictures really fail to capture just how spectacular the final product is in person. I love it! If I could I would keep it up year round, but that would be overdoing it.

Our second tree is our Hawaiian tree. This is the Norfolk Pine we got from the tree farm. My lover helped me decorate this one while we listened to festive music. He was the hooker, as I liked to call him much to his dismay, and I was the hanger. We made a great team.

To continue with the Hawaii theme, we adorned it with the cutest Hawaii ornaments we could find: spam musubi, shaka santas, honus, menehunes, shave ice, tiki faces, rice bowls, maneki neko, our annual HCL ornaments, and a few lovey dovey hearts just because. Oh and how could I forget my lover's Starbucks and Ranger ornaments. He thought they were the perfect final touches.

Being able to put together two Christmas trees has reminded me of how much fun Christmas can be. Of course now I wish we could do this every year just so I could do a different theme each year (might get expensive though). I suppose that's what our retirement will be for, especially since neither one of us will be home for the holidays next year, so who knows when we'll have Christmas in our own home again. More reason to enjoy our special trees this year.

How did you decorate your tree this year?