Connie Riggio Seattle Tacoma Photographer » Seattle Tacoma Senior Family and Wedding Photographer

I wasn’t going to do a Christmas post this year, but after lots of interest I thought I would once again share my love of Christmas Trees with you. Be sure to see all the past posts, since they all give a different perspective.  Here’s the link to last year’s post and from there you can link to the others :).  I hope you enjoy!

My parlor tree was a new one last year and with a 1 year old puppy I’m surprised it survived the season. I originally bought the tree to make it into a snowman. I have the top hat and the red scarf and was going to fill it with snowman ornaments. I quickly changed my mind though and decided on a woodland creature tree instead. I love the look of this tree, even though it’s artifical and flocked it has a very natural woodsy feeling.

I continually add ornaments to the trees that have some sort of significance in our lives and this year I added a nest – we had a bird build a nest right outside our back door this past year (but the babies were stolen by a crow). The other new one was a white kitty ornament, since we are getting a kitty this next year and I was afraid I might not find the right ornament next year.

This is the room and tree we have Christmas morning in.

We also did a craft for this tree last year. I bought the wood rounds and Joe wood burned our initials in a heart on one side, and we tried adding pictures to the backs… but that didn’t turn out so great, haha. We tried!  We have one for Joe and I, Nick and his Amanda and our Amanda and Aidan.

This star is a little different that the other trees. I wanted it more rustic and overly big.

Trees aren’t the only decorations in the house, even though they are the prominant ones. Last year I added 3 more Christmas stockings! One for our dog (aka Ketters) and one for Amanda’s boyfriend, Aidan and Nick’s girlfriend, Amanda.  I love filling the socks and I challenge myself every year to make them extra awesome!  Both of my kids agree, it’s their favorite part of opening gifts :).

The next tree is the living room tree (which used to be in the diningroom). It’s our “memory” tree for the most part. Every year I add an ornament from either a vacation or an event that happened in the year. This year we added the record player to signify that Joe started a little side business in stereo equipment. It’s really just based off of a passion of his. We also opened the guitar paint shop but we already have so many guitars I didn’t add another one (the entire basement tree is full of them).

Amanda got a moon tattoo for her 18th birthday and Nick turned 21! Two new ornaments…

Ketters was excited as I took these photos of the trees and if you look closely at some of the upcoming photos you’ll spot him :). You can see white flock on his sweater from hanging too closely to the parlor tree :).

Our dining room has some decorations too. I added more glass balls to the wreath last year, since I needed to thin the ornaments out on the living room to make room for memory ones.

The kitchen nook has a little tree too. I got this one at The Home Depot a few years ago and it’s the perfect size for a small area. I changed out the star and got a Christopher Radko topper instead. I love the retro feel and the perfect colors! It’s the only tree without a star now.

The basement tree is dedicated to music. The only thing added to this tree this year was more of the red berries embelishing it. You can never have too many embelishments and if you look closely every tree has them. I think it’s what makes them looks so special. I could spend so much money on tree decorations, which is why I only add a little every year. It makes it fun to watch them develop over the years.

Nick’s Tree is waiting for him to come home from college. It’s entirely decorated with penguins except a few WSU ornaments.

His new one this year is from the Tacoma Glass Blowing Studio. The same place I get my glass pumpkins from. He loves glass, like I do and I knew it was perfect for him!

He also has a few other decorations around his room. Ketters loved this penguin, especially when I turned it on and it did it’s little dance :).

Our bedroom tree is one of my favorites. I just love the colors. Gold, copper, black, and cream.

I have a lot of embelishments on this one. I got most of them in the artificial flower section of the local craft store and just bent them in where I wanted them. I’m telling you, if you think something is missing from your tree, it’s this and maybe some ribbon to go around them too. It adds so much!

We have some new ornaments, one I made last year (the ring of vintage jewelry pieces is made from old scraps my mom had (she passed away in Dec. 1993)). I also have an ornament that Amanda’s friend, Emily gave me. She picked it up from Hawaii on a vacation and thought of us, since we honeymooned there in 1989 and vowed to visit every 5 years and haven’t been back since :(.

Amanda’s tree is made up of white, black, blue and pink mostly with chandeliers, snowflakes, ballet and misc ornaments.
We planned on putting a picture in that empty frame below… but just haven’t gotten to it!

We added a few ornaments we found at Hobby Lobby and added the ribbon this year too.  So pretty!

Amanda bought this decoration herself in October. She just couldn’t wait until Dec. to do some decorating. She LOVES Christmas and promises to continue the multiple tree tradition when she has her own house. I will certainly help! That’s for sure.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of the trees this year and Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!