Christmas Decorations

Currently Reading: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

With CC over in the Philippines until mid-December, I have to do quite a bit of the holiday things by myself. Obviously that's going to include a lot of the shopping (we'll have about a week after she gets back to pick up anything we missed) but also the Christmas cards and the decorating. Sure I could just put off the decorating until she gets back but that would mean dragging all the stuff out only to have to put it all back after a couple of weeks. Hardly worth the effort you see. The way I see it, if you're doing Christmas decorating, you want to have them up a good three weeks to a month to make it worth the effort.

Our main problem is that our tree is too big. Every year we add a little more furniture and accessories to the apartment which leaves us with less space for the tree. In previous years it hasn't been a major problem but we've had to make adjustments. Last year, for example, we left some of the limbs off the back of the tree so we could squeeze it in closer to the wall. This year that wasn't going to be enough. You see, we've got Sparky now, our new bird and his cage is HUGE. More drastic measures had to be taken.

I toyed with the idea of getting a real tree this year. I saw some on display at Lowe's and for the size we were thinking, the price was reasonable. I really did put a lot of thought into that option but in the end I decided against it. 'Tis the season to be saving money to make up for all the money we'll be spending on presents so I decided to try and solve the problem another way first.

In the end what I did was put an S curve in the lower branches which shortened them by about 4 inches each. that makes a very big difference all the way around the tree. I also noticed it makes it look quite a big fuller as well. Unfortunately it's not something you can realistically do to the entire tree because the upper branches are just too short already. Physics works against you. It took me almost an hour just doing the bottom 2 rows. Got quite a bit of exercise doing that.

As for the color scheme, that was CC's plan. Every year she picks a theme and this year it is black, gold and silver. Getting the decorations was easy enough. We've had previous silver and gold years so mostly I just recycled those. That made the decorations budget pretty small because all we really needed were some black ornaments and some black and gold garland. And there you have it.

It all came out rather well I think. CC's been showing off the pictures to her family and that makes me feel good. So far everyone has liked it. Now it feels more like Christmas. It's been a bit too warm lately but that will change soon. Supposed to be colder the rest of the week and hopefully it will stay that way for a little while. True, I did grow up in Texas so normally it's a whole lot warmer but I've gotten used to needing a coat come the end of the year.