Sunday, November 30, 2008

So this is Christmas

This was my "make Christmas happen" weekend. I am sore, but I have a glass of champagne.

I did about half of my shopping yesterday. At least some of what remains can be done online.

So today we started operation decoration. After about an hour getting the room and the front of the house clean enough to put up the tree and lights, we started. Crash and Solomon did the outside lights, I did the tree with the boys.


Half way through tree construction. It was somewhere around here that I explained that real live dead trees often come complete with colonies of spiders. We love plastic trees.


And so construction phase is over.


These are the tree decorations - the box at the back on the left is several inches deep and represents the old, crappy, don't make the grade decorations. They go in the middle.


And these are the non-tree decorations. They got distributed later.


Those who know me will be amazed to learn that I actually let the boys help. Really. Even let them put lots of stuff on the tree. Only moved about half of it after them too. So all that remains is to put the star on top.


Note the chair in front. Even standing on a chair, I can't reach the top of the tree, Crash has to put the star on top.


Happy families.

The tree is not really finished. Last year I had candy cane LED lights on the tree, but they died before the end of the season. I am determined to find something similar again.

The lights out the front look way better than I expected too. I'll try to get a photo soon.

All of this has left me aching and tired, and has sadly not diminished the panic. Still haven't ordered the meat for Christmas, most of the rest of the house is still a demilitarised zone and I have at least 16 kids coming for Ben's birthday next Sunday. And I'm spending Saturday at Homebake. Should be a doddle.

5 comments:

  1. The tree looks lovely :)

    We didn't get nearly as much done today as I wanted to. The outdoor lights are up but we've done none of the indoor decorations. We still have the surplus enormous entertainment unit taking up a quarter of the lounge room and, until we've managed to haul that downstairs, there's no room for the tree. But before we can take it downstairs we need to rip out the bench and cupboards next to the sink in the rumpus room so there's somewhere to put it. Nothing is ever simple.

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  2. The tree looks gorgeous! You have inspired me to drag ours out of the shed this weekend and get it up and decorated, with Possum's help of course...

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  3. Lovely tree. I love the christmas thing with the family decorating the tree. Of course, this is not the fashion here iN Austria. The Christkind comes and decorates it in the afternoon and the children sees the magic (load of crap, we have so much fun together decorating it). Have a great christmas (and we have a birthday party in between as well, so hope you have lots of good wine on hand as well).

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  4. Your tree looks very impressive. Ours keeps getting re-decorated and I'm trying hard just to roll with it because I know this is important for the 3 yr old... but when I see one as symetrical as yours, it is a little hard.

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  5. @blue milk: I grew up in a house where you had to prove yourself capable of decorating the tree, and it was absolutely forbidden to touch it once it was decorated. I have passed on the tradition - even Elissa won't touch it!

    There are other parts of Christmas that are all in for us, but I am definitely a Christmas tree nazi. :)

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