Decorating at the Farm

Christmas decorating is making a bit of progress around here.  It has not snowed yet, which makes a lot of things easier…feeding the animals… driving, walking, but snow does make the yard look Christmas-y.  Our Christmas lights are up, so the house looks great at night.  I’d like to say the lights are up, because we’re good at planning, but the truth is, we’ve become ‘one of those people’.  I would have never believed it, but it has happened…I confess, we never took the lights down.  In our defense, they are up pretty high and the lights are little, so no one (I think) ever really saw them!  I did breathe a big sigh of relief when I plugged them in and they still all lit up, which I am sure we will not get away with another year.

Yesterday after a small bit of stomping and out loud gnashing of teeth and a teeny tiny bit of frustration about our currently disorganized, messy house, Number Two Son and I became a committed and dedicated cleaning/organizing team.  (NOT a team dedicated to having me committed).  In no time at all, the house finally began to reflect the fact that the people living in this home do love Christmas.  Not all the house and not all the decorations, but progress and one clean room, do a lot for my sanity and sharing the fun part of decorating with Number Two was the best part of all!

Our stockings are up, and yes, I did hang them with care.  Especially My Loving Spouse’s, as his sort of gets hung up with a thumb tack.  (See this blog is a place for family truth).  There they are our beautiful non-matching stockings, but we’ve come to love them all.  The ones I spent hours cross stitching when I had time to do so and the one we bought at a Pet Store in England, because it was in our budget (cheap) and it says “Happy Christmas”(in the English fashion) and the trip was very special and so who cares that it was meant for Fido.  Truthfully, I have offered to cross stitch My Loving Spouse one that ‘matches’, but he’s fond of his Pet Store one.

Our spot for the tree is looking good with the tree skirt I did sew with my wonderful new machine.  All we need is the tree….which we had great plans for procuring.  We were all taking an afternoon to drive up the mountain and cut it down for real in the forest.  (Yes, Southern California, you can really do this and it costs $5.00)  However, someone got a job and had to work, someone couldn’t leave work and someone else got the stomach flu and someone else sort of forgot…  So, we drove across the valley, into a friend’s yard and cut down one of their trees.  Well, they had a lot, we’re pretty sure, that they will never miss it.

Seriously, they have a small tree ‘farm’ and as we were their last (late) customer, they sweetly gave us a stinking great deal on a beautiful tall tree…reminding me to also take a picture of it for the blog.. so here you go..

For years I hand-made Christmas cards and loved the chance to be creative.  However, since moving to our beloved little farm, we’ve been a tad busy.  I even wrote a Christmas letter every year, but since writing the blog, it did feel a bit redundant, so we even considered sending nothing…but there are a few old friends and family that do not read the blog (collective gasp) and we broke down.  So in the small window of having us all together in the daylight, we got our official Christmas card photo done….and learned that getting 3 horses, 2 dogs and 4 people to look the same way while the camera sits on the trash can with a small trip pod and a timer is a tad tricky….we are thinking 8 out of 9 is quite incredible…we just ran out of hands to make the animals look in the right direction.

We imagine it will be in the mail..oh, say… sometime about New Year’s.