O Tannenbaum and other Christmas-y things

Ahh...Christmas. The Season's upon us. Don't you just love it? Oh, probably not. Most people don't warm up to the spending season, dashing in and out of stores and malls. You can count me as one of those people. But I do try to make the most out of it. For the first time in like ages, we were able to get our Christmas tree up within the first couple of days of December. We've always been tardy on the tree thing. Now, we're enjoying the wondrous scent of pine throughout the entire house. I swear it has a calming effect on us, soothing our holiday jitters.



Andrea's put together a great advent calendar that's proven to become another much needed break from all the Christmas craziness. It's been fun finding out what's in store for us in each perfectly decorated envelope (Andrea's doing, of course). The other day, the kids made gumdrop trees and a wreath. Ava likes listening to Christmas music. (Well, she should, I've collected over 300 holiday-themed songs, enough to choke a moose.) Look at her go:



A couple of things:

I posted about this two years ago, when Nate first released it, so I would be remiss if I didn't mention it each year:



I drew this for my bro-in-law, Nate. He's Dust, the DJ and producer for Mars ILL. He and fellow Deepspace5 alum, Listener, collaborated for this uniquely different hip-hop Christmas album in 2005. Curious? Make it a hip-hop Christmas and buy it HERE. (Scroll down a bit.)

Andrea and I love creating Christmas cards. However, time sometimes catches up on us and we end up pulling all-nighters in order to get them done. Occasionally, she'll do the cards for one year, and I'll do the next, and so on. In 2002, I did the cards. Here's what we sent out:



What's great was that Andrea added her own touch to the cards, making it a true collaboration. Notice that Ava has taken the reins. That was not unintentional. Ava was 2 1/2 at that time and had pretty much taken over our world. The concept was based off a vintage (probably 1940's) Christmas card that Andrea found at a flea market. It was one of those where the entire family was photographed in a sleigh in front of a staged winter scene and the family's name was etched into a ribbon graphic near the bottom of the frame. I always thought it was funny that we never saw any of the reindeer pulling the sleigh.

The next time I did the cards wasn't until 2005. I think I've posted it before, but here it 'tis again:



The obvious inclusion being the EZ. I changed up the look for that year, changing the entire color scheme from red to green and giving everything a more stylized, "modern" look. Oh, and I had a beard. This year, I don't have the time to update this, but maybe I'll do the every three year thing and do one for next year. We'll see.