Holiday Countdown - Day Four - November 30

It took me quite awhile to get this post up, and you'll have to forgive me, but I'm going to pre-date it anyway and at least as long as you aren't subscribed to the blog, you won't notice. You'll just likely miss it. Oh well.

Aleks keeps opening the scrolls and leaving them all about the house where they disappear into thin air. Seriously. I can't find them anywhere. So I didn't photograph it. No worries, though, because I have a handy list of everything we intended. I'm not even certain this activity got done on November 30th, though we did have the garlands and lights all ready to go. In fact, I'm certain it didn't. The majority of it got done on December 1st and 2nd.

We made a quick visit to Target to pick up some extra extension cords for the outdoor lights as well as another strand of LEDs, which we use indoors with the live garland since they're cooler but the garland dries out sooner with the heat on, so as to try to minimize the risk of burning the house down - which is not to imply that we leave these lights plugged in unattended or anything, only to imply that I am cautious and paranoid due to something like chronic anxiety. We also picked up a stocking for Natalie (my sister who is now living with us) to match the others we already have (they all sport snowmen).My best friend's mother, Jane, had embroidered Aleks' name on a snowman stocking for us for his first Christmas, so I continued with the snowman theme. I managed to embroider Anna and Jon on our stockings the year I was pregnant with Sebastian, then for the next Christmas, I asked Jane to do Sebastian's as well. She died suddenly two years ago and Christmas still reminds me of her. While snowmen may not entirely be my thing, I can never change out the stockings now because they are one of the few reminders of Jane that I own.

Christmas was her absolute favorite holiday. She went all out every single year. Their tree alone had more than 700 ornaments and touched the ceiling. It was a pain in the ass to decorate too because I helped on at least one occasion. I remember it vividly: being 15, sorting through dozens of boxes with a gaggle of teenaged friends, all of us awkward and weird. I don't think I'll ever go that far with this holiday thing, though. I hope. Poinsettias aren't really my thing!
Who can be sure though? I did spend the evening embroidering Natalie's name to match ours.
I got Aleks to help me dump our dead mums in the compost pile and clean out the remaining tomato plant out front, then we carefully and painstakingly wrapped our live garland in lights for the porch rails. It was dark and cold and Aleks had given up by the time we were finished. The marigolds are still blooming though. Weird weather.
I'm quite fond of the live garland. It's so traditional and lovely.