It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas has always been a hectic time of year for Hubs and me.  For the duration of our relationship we have traveled to see both his family and mine and have never spent Christmas together in our own house and as a result we don't really have any of our own traditions.  Over the summer we started discussing holiday plans (Hubs is always the planner....) which resulted in a minor argument.  There's never a solution that enables us to make everyone happy, where we can spend equal time with both families, and where we can attend all extended family gatherings for both families.  Throw into the mix that we have a dog, my in-laws live in a pet free condo building so our dog can't come there, and I refuse to board him over Christmas, and it all just ends up stressing me out.  We've said for years that it will be so much easier when we have kids because we can use them as an excuse to stay home.  As we discussed plans, I started to cry and through the tears I told him that I just wanted to stay home at my house this year.  He thought that staying home was a great idea.  So we decided that is what we would do.  

Since we are staying home this year we decided to go all out on decorating (we've always done minimal decorations since we've never been able to really enjoy them).  We decided to decorate last night so we started a fire, made big mugs of Winter Jack, and brought all of the decorations up from the basement, and made a party of it.  As we put the ornaments on the tree we talked about when we got each one or who gave it to us, including one that his grandma (who has since passed) gave me the very first time I met her and the one we got in Hawaii to commemorate our wedding.  It was really fun to reflect on our relationship through Christmas ornaments.  Once we finished decorating we watched a Christmas movie.  Overall it was a fabulous evening and I am so excited to finally start our own traditions.  

Even though we are both excited, I will fully acknowledge that it is bittersweet too.  Our first Christmas at home isn't how we imagined it would be.  We always assumed that we would start new traditions with our kids and get to see the joy of Christmas through their eyes.  But families can consist of two adults and traditions don't require kids, so we're going to make the best of it and have an awesome time.  We'll obviously open a few presents and I think the rest of the day is going to be spent watching Christmas movies a playing board games.  We're planning to make gnocchi for dinner too, which will be interesting because I've never made it from scratch before.  Basically just a lazy day at home together. 

I'm curious about how others spend the holidays.  What do you do?  What are your traditions?  Any suggestions for us?  Christmas movie suggestions?