Decking the apartment

It’s a world of firsts out here.

Our first Christmas as a married couple.  Our first time buying and decorating a Christmas tree.  Our first holiday season out west.

You may remember we were mistakenly delivered a large, pre-lit Christmas tree by our movers, which we were told was ours to keep.  As we should have expected based on the competency of this company, they ended up calling a month later and picking it up to return to the rightful owner.  Blast.

Thus, we had to buy a tree.

I’ve purchased quite a few items to outfit our City apartment on Overstock.com and knew right away that’s where I’d get our tree.

I’m sad to say that this was our first disappointing delivery.  One section of the pre-lit tree is not lit!  Dave tried to replace the bulbs and work with it the best he could, but those lights are out — not sparkling with Christmas cheer along with the rest of the tree.  If we sent the tree back to the company, it would be too long to wait for a replacement.  Being eager to decorate, we decided to settle with the dark spot and are going to purchase a string of lights to fill the area.

(As a note to my fellow informed-online shoppers out there: I plan to leave a thorough and honest review of this product on Overstock.com to warn future consumers of such occurrences.)

I had been looking forward to our decorating session all week.  In preparation, yesterday afternoon we ventured out in the rain to load up on ornaments, a tree skirt and a tree topper.

In the evening, set to the background melodies of the “Electronic Christmas” station on Pandora, we decked the apartment with our minimal Christmas décor.  (Of course, purposefully minimal so it can be easily stored behind our couch once the holiday season is over.)

We already had some special ornaments given to us by my Mom’s friends at our engagement party more than a year ago, so those pieces were ready to be debuted alongside our new purchases.

The tree really fills up the apartment, and we plan to keep it lit day and night.

Not only is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, but to top it off, this pair of new San Francisco residents was just invited to our first Christmas party in the City.  Yup!