'Tis the Season!

One thing I love about this time of year is getting out all of the boxes of Christmas decorations and decorating the house, inside and out. Each decoration has some kind of memory associated with it and each item has a special place. I do admit, I always seem to pick up a new ornament or a new decoration each year and so that adds to the collection. I can justify it since each year I find something broken. I'm still finding places to put things, although it is almost to the point where I might have to start choosing what to display!

This decorating process takes a whole weekend and many people involved. There's a color scheme with the house: blue and white. These are also the colors of the lights that we put on the tree with the exception of the multi-colored star topper that we've had for 16 years. 

Today was the special day that we got our tree and we always go to the same place in town: Delancey Street trees. I think we found today's tree in less than 10 minutes. This is amazing considering how long it used to take the family to find a tree back when we lived in California. My sister and I would always argue over which tree was better--the wider one or the taller one. Delancey Street always brings the prettiest trees from a farm up in Oregon somewhere. I also like that when we buy a tree from them, it is going to a wonderful cause. The foundation helps ex-substance abusers and ex-convicts  to turn their lives around and to become productive citizens. 

We started off the weekend with a wonderful Christmas party on Friday night that had such delicious food. There was ham, turkey pot pie, potato salad, and green salad. For dessert there were many fruit pies, a lemon cake, a Craisin cake, and a Death by Chocolate cake. The whiskey punch was especially good.

So now the holiday season has officially begun (or did it start with Thanksgiving?). I hope you have as much fun decorating and celebrating as I've had so far and plan to have in the weeks to come.

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Neat