Early Christmas gift!

From Christmas decor

To give some background, I'm a huge fan of Demdaco's Willow Tree collection of figurines. I got a unique one for each of my bridesmaids at our wedding, and for each of our parents. Even though I think they're the coolest, I only have a couple pieces myself.

I've been coveting the Willow Tree Nativity Set, because we have no nativity set up, and it would add to my Willow Tree collection, and I love the rough look to it, but I've held off buying it because I can't justify spending $65 ($150+ when you add in the wise men, shepherd & stable animals & creche) when figurines that tell the same story can be had for $10 or $15. So this year, we've had our Christmas decorations up minus baby Jesus.

A few weeks ago, we had a couple newly-married friends over, Jon & Lauren. I mentioned we really liked Willow Tree, and they said, yeah, we got some for wedding presents, we actually got 2 of the nativity sets. My eyes about popped out of my head, and I mentioned how we had really wanted those, but they were more than we wanted to spend. I half-jokingly said we'd buy the extra one off of them. They said they'd give it to us, we could have it if we like them so much. Last night they called us up and said we could pick it up (they very conveniently live in our apartment complex). I was an excited girl. I gave them cookies left over from this week in a pretty Christmas tin as a thank you.

So, now, it's set up on top of our VCR, on top of the TV. Josh said I shouldn't blog this, because the set might've been a planned gift from someone, and I might ruin it, but, I suppose I would've ruined it in a couple days anyway... and I had to set up the nativity scene before Christmas! Sorry if I'm bursting anyone's bubble... but we still can add stable animals & a stable to the set... hint hint. I only have 1 angel, so more of those could be added too. No wise men, though. I'm pretty sure they didn't show up for a while later.