Jingle bells....

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, even without the little trees that are in the corner of my sitting room and waiting to go to the lake cottage. I picked up C after school this afternoon and she spent about an hour decorating one of the table-top trees for me. It's a feather-tree about three-feet high with a drum as its base. I bought it after the holidays last year, in one of the more expensive local gift shops. Beautiful little tree, but its price was way too high before Christmas. I was very happy to just wait till Christmas was over and go back and buy it at 75% off its original price.

I took down some of the ornament boxes for C and suggested she fill that little gold feather-tree with all the sequined and beaded ornaments. This way, if Mickey Kitty happens to knock it over, nothing will break. When they had that feather-tree on display in the store, they filled it with Christopher Radko ornaments. It looked beautiful, but I wouldn't trust my more expensive ornaments to be within easy reach of a year-old kitten. C did an excellent job with the sequined ornaments, attaching the small ones to the top branches and the larger ones to the bottom. I didn't tell her what to do... I just gave her the box of ornaments that I wanted her to use and told her to use as many as she wanted in any way she wanted. The result is a very colorful and happy-looking tree.

Next time she comes over, we'll do the vintage aluminum tree.... that one gets vintage glass ornaments, mostly in red and green colors because they show up better on the silver branches. Mickey Kitty didn't bother much with that tree last year, but I still used red ribbon to tie it down to the table that I put it on, just in case. I don't think he liked the brittleness of the aluminum branches. Should be interesting this year with that kitten... he's a little older now and a little bigger. Hopefully, he'll behave his little furry self so I won't have to keep him in the screen-porch till all the decorations come down. I think he'll be fine, though. We haven't had all that much trouble with any of our cats, with anything in this house. They're all curious about everything, but they seem to know what they can and cannot play with. Granted, it takes more than a few times to convince them, but they get the idea after just a little while.

Gorgeous day outside today.... bright and sunny and summery-warm....... I'd be perfectly happy with these 80-plus temperatures all year long. And if we're lucky, we'll just get a cold snap or two, and then we'll get back to spring-like temperatures from December through February.