Getting ready, one bit at a time

We're super excited for Christmas 'round here. The Christmas tree is up now, sparkling away. We use just a smallish table-top tree because we can't really spare an entire corner for a huge one, but I love it. We missed it last year, when we elected not to set it up since we moved in here five days before Christmas, six months pregnant, and we spent Christmas eve, morning and day with family anyway...

I went down to our storage locker on P2 after the Santy Clause parade to fetch the tree box and decorations. Thankfully I was thinking last time I reorganized down there in the summer and they were oh-so-wisely placed right at the front. Genius, right? I opened up the tree box and went about bending the branches to resemble a realish-looking tree and strung the white lights that were magically not tangled at all. Still, thinking I was so smart... So easy! So quick! Logical! Then I opened the box marked "decorations". It was immaculately tidy. Took out the first ornament box and... empty. No ornaments in it. Just the empty case with it's little glass-ball protecting plastic tray. Same with the next box and the next. There were no ornaments in the entire box! Then I started to vaguely remember balling all the ornaments up in a paper Whole Foods bag two years ago. Apparently I thought I didn't have a few minutes to spare from my life of relative leisure back then to put them away properly? Now they must be somewhere in one of the boxes still sealed with packing tape, not strategically placed near the front of the storage room but presumably under the old chairs, old dresser, boxes of wall-matching touch-up paint and saucer sleds and ugly lamps and extra wineglasses...

So yesterday I went out and bought new ornaments. I am so against the concept however I figured it was sadly worth another $35 to not have to dig through that whole mess. It's a very neatly Tetris-stacked mess, but still, a lot of work... Good news! The Bay downtown had great ornaments and they were all 40% off! Why is it so complicated buying ornaments, by the way? I spent probably an hour in there debating. It's not that hard, I kept telling myself. Eventually Cole got annoyed at me and I figured it wasn't worth spending any more time figuring out which snowflake thing we 'needed' at the top of the tree.

Cole loves the ornaments and the lights. Especially the awesome family of silver owls!

I also spent an hour yesterday morning while Cole was napping making him a stocking. Couldn't resist the chance to see if he fit inside too of course... It's totally reversible - inside is the same Amy Butler fabric in red and white. I love the super soft minky fabric cuff but damn, that stuff is the dickens to sew with.

Today we were out and about in Kerrisdale and I stopped at Moore's Bakery for some sustenence, in cookie form. I bought a gingerbread man and for some reason picked out exactly 12 cookies to-go. I don't know why - we certainly don't need to eat more cookies around here and I plan to do some baking. Perhaps it was subconscious, buying exactly 12 cookies when I have a cookie-exchange to go to on Thursday? I realized the handyness of this in the car after I had bitten into a delicious cherry icebox cookie. So, realizing I couldn't use them for the exchange with only 11 (plus I hope to make some buttertarts tomorrow for that anyway) I figured I'd bring them home for us. Well, eleven cookies would never do, uneven number and all, so I ate another one. I thought about evening it out some more by eating two birds nest cookies too, but realized that having a latte and five cookies for lunch wouldn't make me very smart and stopped... ;-)