Simply Living in the Northwoods: Christmas Preparations

I know, it seems like we were just having and Easter egg hunt and now we're decorating a Christmas tree; sorry, about the long hiatus from Simply Living in the Northwoods - we've been living, rather than writing. This upcoming year, we'll do a better job of doing both.

Our tree has been up for a few weeks now and so far the dogs have only floored a few ornaments. We'll see if they are as kind to the presents I just put under the tree today.

After wrapping a bunch of gifts I took a facebook break only to be told by Terracycle that. "In the U.S. annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons." That has inspired me to carefully fold the used gift-wrap and bring it to my father when I visit after Christmas. He has a small collection of reused wrap and I noticed last year it was running a little low.

You might notice from the photo that our tree appears a little fuller this year. The tree was not decorated from scratch - it is a store-bought, rather a gas station-bought tree. It was purchased for $17.00 at the local BP station. We thought it would help their efforts in the Gulf and opted not to tromp through the woods looking for the perfect, "it's not that spindly" tree.

We put the outdoor lights up on Thanksgiving weekend, but we didn't turn them on (that would be gauche) until December.

Dog pen decorations

Lots of icicle lights

Who's that doggie in the window?

My thought was to put them up when the weather was nice so we wouldn't have to deal with snow and frigid fingers. Of course, using this logic, we could have put them up in July. The lights look great and the chickens especially like the icicle lights on their coop.