here's my heart, o' take and seal it

This weekend I experienced a first - the first Christmas tree of my very own, hand picked by a fabulous friend and I!  Luckily, my mom had a box of ornaments that I apparently picked out several years ago and even more luckily, I happened to pick all the cute vintage ones my grandmother has passed down.  When I'm ready for a bigger tree, I'll be adding the years worth of ornaments my grandma has given each of us that correspond with a book she chooses and reads each year.  Definitely a top tradition for me.  I listed to this over and over and over again (and again).  Probably because hymns are the only part of church I ever really liked, and I like this one a lot.  

All that said, here's to my perfectly imperfect first whirl at creating my own Christmas :)

I squealed in delight when I saw these next ones!  And she hand stitched them!  

At a certain point, I may or may not have broken part of the star (shown above) :(  
So I improvised and decided that Love would be my focal point.  
Wow I'm getting cheesy in my old age. . . 

Say what?  You want to see pictures of my cute family decorating our tree?  Fair enough.

Thanks for letting me share some Christmas cheer with you!

just a little heart

I have a few really fun posts planned for this week, but need to talk about some polaroid magic first!  

A few months after I started my current job I spotted a bunch of polaroid 600 film in our refrigerator at work.  And when I say "a bunch" I mean specifically, 100 sheets.  10 packs of 10.  As it turned out, no one was interested in claiming them and so of course I happily did.  This was before The Impossible Project got off the ground so it was an extra special find.  I'm down to two more packs as I write this :(  Anyway, my apartment is rather small so with the exception of some extra specials shots, I started storing them away in a sweet vintage tin.  Until the other day when I finally snapped out of it and realized that was ridiculous.  So I pulled everything off of my largest wall and filled it with the polaroids and the people I love.  I'm not gonna lie. . .it warms my heart every time I see it and that got me thinking about how I can incorporate a little more love and a little more heart in my life.  Turns out, it isn't as hard as it seems.  

Night Night, and lots of love.

*A