All apologies to my scroogie blogger friends but....we like Christmas in our neck of the woods. I have decided to tone down my decor, this year, opting for an understated white and silver motif that would thrill Martha no end. The decorating in the house has always started at Halloween, morphs through Thanksgiving then goes to full-on, wrap the banisters and (as my friend Sandi at Cheaper than Therapy calls it) vomit Christmas all over the house. Unfortunately clutter, even Christmas clutter, makes me crazy these days so I think the toning down will make for a more relaxed holiday. We have brought out the Christmas music (sorry, Eko and all) and we have stacks of CDs....everything from Perry Como to the Backstreet Boys. We love to singalong with John Denver and the Muppets and, man, the girls LOVE the Al Green Christmas CD. We have pulled up the Christmas playlists on our iPods and bump the holidays wherever we go. Hope and I hit the craft fairs last weekend and Mark and I have been checking out lights in area neighborhoods. I am not done with my shopping and I'm sure some packages will barely make it to their intended recipients on time.
We put up outside lights but try to avoid making our house visible from space. We do just enough to be sure Santa finds us. This year, we switched over to LEDS so Mark has been working his little fingers to the bone with an idea he's been cooking up for the last ten years. He has installed the lights in PVC, cut to fit the roofline. Drilling holes for the bulbs and tucking the wire inside a slit run lengthwise.
He has hooks on the house and eyebolts in the pipe to hang it all up in one easy step. Understand that my spouse is short and my house is not -- so getting up on the ladder to hang lights two stories up is not one of his favorite activities. This will make it so easy, it will be tough for Andy Butch to beat him again, being the first in the neighborhood to hang lights. On our street, this is not a size competition but speed only. More importantly, taking them down after New Years will require only a small window of fair weather.
So, we shall deck our halls and shove a tree up Angie;s skirt. We will drink nog, make batches of cookies and maybe make our own cards to send to friends. We will also be terribly relieved when we make it to December 25th with our minds intact.
We put up outside lights but try to avoid making our house visible from space. We do just enough to be sure Santa finds us. This year, we switched over to LEDS so Mark has been working his little fingers to the bone with an idea he's been cooking up for the last ten years. He has installed the lights in PVC, cut to fit the roofline. Drilling holes for the bulbs and tucking the wire inside a slit run lengthwise.
He has hooks on the house and eyebolts in the pipe to hang it all up in one easy step. Understand that my spouse is short and my house is not -- so getting up on the ladder to hang lights two stories up is not one of his favorite activities. This will make it so easy, it will be tough for Andy Butch to beat him again, being the first in the neighborhood to hang lights. On our street, this is not a size competition but speed only. More importantly, taking them down after New Years will require only a small window of fair weather.So, we shall deck our halls and shove a tree up Angie;s skirt. We will drink nog, make batches of cookies and maybe make our own cards to send to friends. We will also be terribly relieved when we make it to December 25th with our minds intact.
