In the Season

Yesterday the holiday spirit overtook me. I think I had been building up to this, because I had been ogling the Christmas decorations at the craft store (and I mean the cheap ones). I almost justified buying a weird plastic ribbon because it was 60% off. Last week I bought an Advent Calendar, you know, the ones with the chocolates inside for each day? And also a wreath which I put some ribbon around (that would be real ribbon, not molded plastic). And then, yesterday came. And I just couldn't take it anymore. I needed a tree. So after a quick conversation about trees, we went and bought one. A fake one. That's how we justified it. This talk about a tree started with the lights we found downstairs so we could put lights up around the outside porch. After we decided that the two small strands of white lights would look just lovely around a tree, we hopped in the car. So our untangling of Christmas lights turned into a shopping trip for a fake tree and two more big strands of multi-colored outdoor lights. And almost an over-priced tree-skirt, but we dodged that. It was a jolly good time. We came home, turned on some Vince Guaraldi, unbent the tree branches, snapped the tree together, made some origami tree decorations and sat back and enjoyed our handiwork. And we have more plans. Oh yes. We need a tree topper (not sure if we'll make one or find a cheap one) and also one big "something" to put out with the lights on the porch. I heard, "Maybe a star, or snowflake or something" I'm really very excited about this because it's been a very long time since I've had a tree. Or even decorated for the holidays at all. Maybe it's the Midwest thing for me to do?