decking the tree

Last year in Boston, buying ornaments for my first tree, I quickly seemed to develop a theme:

It wasn't that I was extremely enamoured with snowmen, they were just the most widely available option. A few weeks into advent, I began to notice the alarming trend, yet was helpless to stem the flow of snowmen onto my tree. I looked far and wide (and I really do mean everywhere) for variety, particularily along more religious lines -- we do celebrate this holiday for a reason. However, I had almost no luck.

Then, this year Kevin's mom sent out all of his old ornaments. Along with the obligatory snowmen, we have a whole new genre inhabiting this year's tree:

Firefighters. :-) I suppose though if I had to choose a theme to guard our tree (who will be unwatered for over a week, poor thing), firefighters aren't half bad. We'll have to leave variety for 2005.