Counting down to Christmas

Before we left for Thanksgiving, a little elf by the name of Trinity stopped by with a very special gift for Craig...a custom-made beer Advent calendar.  How awesome is that?!?  Check out the impressive wrapping for his own version last year, and here's the customized beer crate with a bottle for each day:

Craig didn't want the pregnant lady to feel left out, so he got me this adorableness at Target so I could have an Advent calendar, too.  Which prompted me to actually go learn about Advent, and...we really are just counting down to Christmas, y'all.  Unless there's more to it and I'm just not a very good scholar.  My attention span is a little short these days.  At any rate, let's count down the days, Craig with beer and me with chocolate.  That's not a bad way to do it.

Here's beer #1, which Craig enjoyed last night while we watched death and destruction (well, that's not really keeping with the holiday spirit, is it?  We'll try to get some Christmas movies in the rotation...).  We're already big fans of Shiner Cheer around here, so you know this one was well received.

Trinity, you should go into business and sell these crates on Etsy.  It's brilliant.

Jumping the gun

It feels eighteen kinds of wrong to do anything acknowledging Christmas before the sacred day o' turkey passes...but we did it this year.  In the form of going ahead and busting out decorations, addressing a few Christmas cards, and engaging in one of my favorite kinds of shopping along with actual real, in-store shopping for things like extra garland and ornaments.

Pure logistics, people.  Thanksgiving is just late this year, and we'll be out of town, and then next weekend disappears, and then before you know it the tree's not up until December 8 and we only enjoy it for two weeks before it all falls down.  So we went for it.  I think it helped that it was cold and disgusting this weekend and actually felt like we were on the verge of real winter activity - roaring fire (well, as roaring as it gets when the fire starts by flicking a switch on the wall) all weekend long!

Ginormous tree, also an excellent tree fort for Harrison - thank goodness he leaves ornaments alone.  We just have to hang the breakables out of the reach of Zach's tail...

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...oh, wait, do we have a real chimney?  Hmmm...

He of the wonky stocking (it turns!  I think I need to throw a few strategic stitches in there to keep it facing forward) and keeper of the fire

There's also garland and ribbon twirling down the staircase with giant ornaments dangling, a wreath on the front door, and cinnamon pine cones scattered here and there to make the house all Christmasy.  Yay for holiday cheer!  Just not excessive amounts of holiday cheer - please don't ever let me put inflatable things on my lawn.  I just don't think I can go there.

We also gave in to an impulse scentsicles purchase at Home Depot; they were a little overwhelming at first and a touch on the air-freshener-from-a-can scent side, but now they've pleasantly faded into a "oh, is that a real Christmas tree??" kind of scent coming from the corner of the living room.  It's hard to beat the pre-lit tree that's relatively easy to assemble, especially when you can kinda fake it on the real tree scent front.

Happy holidays, y'all!

To decorate!

Worth decorating for a party of one?  Sure, why not!  So last night, that's just what I did.  Ummm...does it take a little bit of the holiday edge off if I decorated to the sounds of Arizona vs. Oregon in double overtime rather than "sounds of the season?"  Whatever the setting, the apartment is now minimally bedecked with some touches of holiday cheer.

You know, they could make those artificial tree needles just a touch softer since they require a certain amount of fluffing and un-smushing every year.  Slightly ouchy.  And while I'm not necessarily a huge fan of artificial snow puffs, they do a bang-up job of concealing power cords and unattractive metal tree bases while also providing a soft landing place for any snowflake ornaments that may decide to take off on an adventure in parachuting.  I love those little snowflakes!  Carrie and Jason gave them to me for Christmas a few years ago, and they're just perfect for my little trees.

When I unearthed the Christmas wreath for the front door, I also found my fall wreath I'd forgotten about, which involved a random burst of creativity, bargain purchases at Garden Ridge, and some hot glue gun adventures with Amy.  Sorry I forgot about you, little fall wreath!  Maybe you can make an appearance next year.

Oh, and I've got more than just the trees and wreath going on - there's the squishy snowman (with berry wreath backup) guarding the living room from his perch on the bookcase:

And if that theory holds, then apparently Kerry and Carrie are also keeping watch over the living room from the picture frame, which is kinda cool.  Although they're wielding bridal/bridesmaid bouquets, which are much less menacing than the squishy snowman's rather sharp and pointy spade/shovel thing.  And yes, I realize inanimate objects are not actually going to come to life and defend my living room in any way.

Ooh, there are also jingle bell snowflakes dangling from cabinet pulls in the kitchen, which I might have to rethink.  Yes, they're festive and shiny and cheerful, but I don't know if I can really handle a jingle of holiday cheer every time I want to grab a spoon or pull out a box of pasta. 

A bit o' holiday cheer to all ya'll out there, and...Bryan Family Christmas Cruise sets sail in almost exactly twenty-eight days!  Yee-haw!