I don't think I could ever be a professional decorator. That's hard work, I'm telling ya. I was going to put up my tree Saturday, only I got this far, and seriously considered going for a minimalist approach this year.
I love it when it's all decorated and pretty, but boy stringing all those lights are a pain in the patooty.
After getting all the branches floofed, I took a break to put up my outside lights. I'd bought a string of these larger lights on clearance a couple of years ago, but didn't use them last year.
I wanted to go with the LED lights on the outside of my house because they're so much brighter. This string should have been long enough to cover the whole front of the house -- if I'd had an outlet at one end or the other. As it is, my outlet is smack dab in the middle.
Not wanting to run 25 feet of extension cord, I just hung these lights across the porch and car port. It was long enough that I could double back when I got to the far end, but not long enough to do the rest of the house. I used another string of the smaller lights on that end.
They still didn't quite reach to the end of the house. I briefly thought about taking them all back down and using the lights I'd put up last year. Briefly. They look OK once it gets dark, so they're staying just like they are. I'll check out the clearance sales after Christmas and see if I can find something that will work better for next year.
That done, I came back inside and started stringing lights on the tree -- taking copious knitting breaks and watching the Longest Football Game I've Ever Seen. Seriously. Seven overtimes. SEVEN. It would have been better if the right team had won, but it was still an exciting game.
I got so strung out, I had to rip the same round out of this hat twice.
I finally just put it away until after the game was over. Which was nearly midnight. But I was so close to being done, I went ahead and finished.
The next day, I put a pompom on it.
I'd never been able to make a good pompom, but I watched some YouTube videos and decided to give some of those techniques a try. The one video I referenced uses toilet paper tubes to wrap the yarn around, then she cuts circles out of cardboard. She kind of sandwiches her pompom between the circles and trims around it. It's really easy. Maybe in a future post, I'll find the video and link it. Right now, I'm trying to get this one written so I can go to bed.
OK, so where was I? Oh, yeah, Christmas tree. It's finished!
I had a bit of a melancholy moment when I put my tree skirt down. I hadn't been able to use it in ages, because the cat always peed on it.
I can't quite decide if I'm glad I'm able to use it again or not. I'd kind of rather have my kitty back. Then I had another melancholy moment when I hung Katie's ornament on the tree. Nine years she's been gone, and I still miss her. And I still hang her little stocking on the tree. Every year.
One last thing before I go getting too maudlin..
I bought a new Christmas Cactus, like I needed another one.
But it's red. And I don't have a red one.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
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