Christmas emerges from the chaos

It's been quite a few months. Shoot, it's been quite a week. But today, here, it's not about that. It's about Christmas!

While I was busy writing about our vacation, I was also decorating our house. Because I love Christmas. And because I don't want to start making cookies until Patrick is here to eat them all. Otherwise I will eat them all. And that would be bad. Because I don't have the metabolism of a 21 year old college kid. Actually, I don't think I ever did. Oh well.

Our house is prettiest at night, so I just took some pictures...


Decorating the house for Christmas is, for me, as cool as opening presents on Christmas morning. You see, as I've gotten older two things have happened: First, I've gotten more involved in what I get for Christmas, so my presents, while usually awesome, aren't always a surprise. Second, my memory for small details that aren't relevant to my daily life has gotten a little weaker. Those two things add up to create a very exciting experience on Thanksgiving day (or whenever I decide to decorate), because I've pretty much totally forgotten what I bought last year at the after Christmas sales on decorations by the time the next year rolls around. So I open my ornament boxes and find all sorts of lovely surprises like this ornament from Paper Source's after-Christmas-2007 sale:


And this gem (ooh, that's almost a pun!) from Pottery Barn:


Oh, and these giant ornament clusters that we've hung from the staircase railing on the second floor, so they just seem to float down to the first floor.


That picture got me thinking how beautiful a Christmas tree is when it's out of focus. I bring you this study in increasing levels of focus on our tree, entitled "I can't decide how blurry I want this photo to be":


And of course the nutcrackers come out. There are a lot of nutcrackers in our house and Alex and I love to put them out even more these days in honor of my dad, who was head over heels enamored with nutcrackers.

The two kings of our nutcracker family, watching over the tree :)

Alex has been playing Christmas music just about every day at home. I'm getting into the spirit, slowly. And taking these pictures, actually focusing on the result of our efforts, has helped a bit as well.

Once Patrick arrives on Sunday, and I really start baking, I should be there!