Puppy's First Christmas: Decking the Halls

I'm a dog.  It's not Christmas yet, but it will be soon.  I've been picking up the slack around here and getting everything ready for Christmas.  I want it to be perfect.  After all, a puppy only gets one first Christmas!

I began holiday preparations by having Matt and Alicia drive me over to a nearby church to select a Christmas tree.  Last year, they had their tree on the ground in a stand.  This year, I advised them to get a shorter tree and put it on a table so I wouldn't be tempted to eat either the tree or the ornaments.  Here's the one we selected:

In between chasing children, I picked out the tree!

 Ain't she a beauty?  I think I did a really good job, considering that until recently, I had realized people liked to take chopped down trees and feature them in the living room with decorations.

Helping the "old man" put up the tree.

Once the tree was up, it was time to decorate.  I let Matthew and Alicia handle the placement of the lights and ornaments, but provided valuable assistance sniffing and licking (okay, okay, and trying to chew) several of the ornaments.

All decorated!

My favorite ornament is one that Alicia found special and gave me as an early Christmas present.  It's a pit bull puppy made of dough, and it looks a lot like me!  

When Alicia found it on Etsy, she said she gasped and ordered it immediately.  Aside from the brown spot on her face, this pup is almost my spitting image.  The lady who makes them, Judy Caron, was even nice enough to change the pup's red collar to blue, and write my name on it!

And of course no Christmas would be complete without hanging the stockings "with care" from the card catalog.

Another of my early Christmas presents is this personalized "Snow Dogs" stocking from Company Store.  Alicia found last year's designs on clearance earlier this fall and knew she'd struck gold.  My only complaint is that the white puppy with the green scarf is missing her brown cow spots.  I can't wait to see what I find in my stocking on Christmas morning!

Stay tuned to see if Santa decides whether I've been naughty or nice.  On the one hand, I think he has to side with "nice," since Matt and Alicia are always telling me what a good girl I am, and people are still not tired of telling me how cute I am.  On the other hand, I usually jump up on them and try to lick their faces off right after I receive that compliment, and I have munched on my chair a few times, which hasn't made Matt and Alicia too happy.  I guess we'll see!