Learning about Photography

So I've somewhat secretly had this desire to learn to take better pictures and to also learn how to edit pictures to make them more fantastic than what I currently have.  Well my parents helped me out some with this secret desire.  For Christmas I got a very nice Canon Rebel camera.  Now I know less than a tenth of what this camera can do and will have to seriously get some help to learn how to use this camera to make my pictures actually be decent but at least its a good start.  But I didn't want to do a lot of reading or anything when I first got it.  So I played around with it some and got some decent shots of my Christmas tree.  I liked them enough I thought I would share a few :)