It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas....

I have spent most of today setting up Christmas decorations around the house, and I am just about done now. Nothing more to do until we get the big tree that goes in the living room. My husband usually goes to the Christmas tree lot the day after Thanksgiving. The ceiling in that room is about 18 feet high on one side, then it slants down to about 9 feet on the other side. Sort of a ski-lodge effect.... without the snow and ice, without the skis and the mountains.

One year we had a tree that reached to the very tip of the high part of the ceiling once the star was on the top of it. It took my husband two days to string the lights on that tree, and I spent the next four days doing ornaments. The tree was huge... we had to put it right in the middle of the room and it was so wide that you couldn't see the left side of the room if you were standing on the right side. It was more forest than tree. We have a very big living room, but with that tree, we had to move the sofa into the breakfast room till after the holidays. Its branches took all of the ornaments we had, and we went out to buy more. All the large Santas stood around the base of the tree, as did the angels. By the time the day of our Christmas party got here, everything that was around the house that could pass as a decoration found its way either onto or around that tree.

Now we have a rule...... no Christmas trees higher than 9 feet. And no trees wider than the front door. However, my husband gets around that last rule very easily-- when these steroid-fed trees come into the doorway, they're bound up with netting, so they very easily fit through the doorway. When we're ready to take the tree to the curb after the first of the new year, we usually have to cut away half of the branches to get it out of the front door. The whole procedure turns into an adventure.

But as for today......... I've just finished decorating the silver aluminum tree. I didn't put that one up last year, and we all missed it. This year it's up, in the living room instead of the dining room. Mickey Kitty was sound asleep all the while I was busy with that tree...... he was on the other side of the room and didn't see me, I guess, because he never opened his eyes whenever I looked his way. Should be interesting to see what happens when he does wake up. "The Mickey Factor," as my husband calls it. I've always tied that silver tree to whichever table it's on, being that it's very light and can be easily tipped over. Right now, it's tied to a marble-topped table held up by cherubs. A very Victorian table whose cherubs are now reaching their arms up to a 1950's kitsch-y silver aluminum Christmas tree.

Hark the Texas angels sing, y'all.