Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sabbatical Ended

I’ve been on a long break here. a lot has happened since mid-September but I’ve mostly spent the last eight to ten weeks trying to figure out how to step back in here gracefully. If you know me in real life you know that “gracefully” isn’t often a word used to describe me.

We’re in the thick of the holiday stretch now, just coming off of Thanksgiving. It was a great day with family and a couple from church with more than enough food but not quite enough leftovers. Not sure how we managed that one.

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If you’d like a tutorial on how to make a pumpkin arrangement like this you can take a look at this post from 2009.DSCN3484

Friday morning bright and early my babies’ daddy unloaded the Christmas boxes and totes from our shed. This was much easier since I just hosted a yard sale weekend before last and returned none of the unsold goods to the shed. (“Hosted” makes it sound like something glamorous you’d get an engraved invitation to, no?)

As I started putting up the very convenient pre-lit tree, I was excited to know that the tree was officially "paying for itself” this year. I also remembered we had a little issue with lights last year going out in the middle of my main tree. So the “trouble shooting” began. I believe the term “trouble shooting” must come from someone having trouble that made them want to start shooting something.PC250039

We did find the magic light fixer thingy and bought it some of those expensive little tiny silver cookie batteries. Turns out it’s not so magic. Four hours later there was no solution to the problem, but a lot of annoying beeping had taken place.

We gave up and shoved the boxes aside for Sabbath. Saturday night we started in again and finally decided to just remove the bad light string. By Sunday morning I was no more motivated since now there was another section of four branches not lighting up. I started by replacing bulbs as I came to them while fluffing the branches – harvesting donor bulbs from the first string pulled off. I was pretty surprised that about half the bulbs I was harvesting were no good. I ended up using nearly the entire string to replace burnt out bulbs. This is not a good showing for the convenience of “pre-lit” trees...

Just as I was removing the second string it LIT UP again. Oy! I shook and yanked and pulled on it until I was thoroughly convinced it was going to stay lit. Then I started re-attaching the string.

Finally late Sunday evening I got both of the strings replaced, found the “best” side, got it turned to the front of the room and started hanging decorations. About 10 ornaments in I noticed the first string I replaced was out again.

I gave up and just turned the dark spot to the back and kept hanging ornaments.

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By late Monday evening I was finished. My teenaged son has suggested that it might be a little bit cluttered. Really, son? Cluttered? Like your bedroom, cluttered? I don’t think of it as cluttered… It’s my Christmas  “scrapbook”. Every ornament means something or marks some milestone for our family.DSCN3520DSCN3519DSCN3515

I don’t think the solution is fewer ornaments – the solution is clearly a larger tree (pre-lit, of course). So at the least we’ll need a higher ceiling. That means either a re-model or a new home.

You see how hard my life is? It’s no wonder I don’t have time to blog very often…

Is your tree up yet, and are you a faux or live tree fan?

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