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!