For this Christmas and New Year's, we've decided to buy a mini-tree instead of putting up our huge regular one we used for the past couple of years. The main reason being is Natasha, of course. She's at an age where she gets into everything, pulls on everything, and wants to touch everything. And I know that she needs to learn the word "no" and understand its meaning, but we just couldn't risk her pulling the tree over her head. We've made our apartment more-or-less baby-proof so that she can run around without being supervised 24/7, but with a huge floor-to-ceiling tree, this would not have been possible.

So we left our tree with its blue-and-silver ornaments and decorations in our locker room downstairs, and instead bought a pixie-dust 2.5 ft mini-tree. It came with lights already attached, and we went for a red-and-gold theme for this one. Natasha is really curious about it and keeps poiting at the lights and going, "this!".