Tree's A Crowd

Firstly, many thanks to my loving spousal unit (the most fantastic man in the universe, bar none) for the title of this post. He's just so darned clever!

Today's fun family we're-still-snowed-in task was decorating the living room for Christmas (other bits of the house will get done as and when we can be bothered over the next couple of weeks). Since we'd bought some cute little trinkets to put on it for this year (gotta have a new look, right? I mean, just because it's a tree doesn't mean it should be stuck wearing the same old thing year after year), I asked my darling husband to fetch the stockings and Santa hat down from the upstairs "just stick it in there, we won't need it for a while" closet/disaster area. He brought them down ... along with a few big shopping bags full of unused tree-dressings from prior years! Too bad, too late, I'd already opened the snowflakes and Nutcracker ornaments, so everything else will get shoved back into the upstairs closet for another day, unless there's some other tree somewhere that just shrieks out for doing up.

Here's the view with the camera flash on ...

Then here's one that's MUCH more shiver-up-your-back, taken by said spousal unit (who knows how to turn the flash off -- something that's remained a mystery to me until tonight) ...

And finally, a photo of my precious Mark, together with twins Kendall (on the left, wearing her Cinderella costume from Halloween ... hey, a holiday's a holiday) and Kieran.

Owing to the Blizzard of November 2006 (and no, it probably wasn't that drastic in terms of what people in Maine and Montana and other bits of the Great White North get, but for us it was major), some bits that Mark had ordered for the outdoor display haven't arrived yet, so I'll leave the posting of the exterior extravaganza for another day (like one when it's actually out).

Tomorrow I must venture out into the wild ... there's shopping to be done, and it's of a sort that requires anyone wishing to actually acquire a ___________ (I'll fill that blank in for you later) to be at a certain venue at or before a certain time in order to have any hope of actually procuring one. Argh, the things we do at Christmas!