Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

Let's check the ol' calendar on the wall. December First. Right! Let's look at the thermometer on the kitchen window. 28 degrees. Brrrr! Now, let's look outside and check the weather. Snow on the ground and still coming down. Yep. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I'm actually thankful for the wintry weather to remind me of the season, since we won't be decorating for the Holidays around this house this year. No, we'll probably be loading up the moving truck to send our stuff to storage along about December 15th. Makes me a little sad since decorating is such a fun thing for me. You know, getting out the Christmas China and Waterford "Twelve Days of Christmas" wine glasses...unwrapping and placing the 50+ Nutcrackers...picking out just the perfect size tree (and then removing some off the bottom so it'll fit...:)...going through all the many ornaments we've collected over the years and deciding which ones/how many we can use on the tree this year......oh yeah, I'll miss all that for sure.

Fortunately, while we were visiting Missy M for Thanksgiving, she suggested that we go get her tree and decorate it. Yea!

We found a beautiful Fraser Fir at Lowe's, which was tagged as a 6'-7' tree, but reaches almost to the 8' ceiling, even after a trimming and a hair-cut! Mr. T. did the lights, and topped the tree with the Star and Angel (a gift from Auntie D). I tied ribbon on the new teal (matches her colors perfectly!) and silver bell ornaments. Then, Missy M placed all the ornaments and the raffia, just so. She has such a wonderful eye for design, so her tree always looks magazine-perfect (as you can tell from the photos).

She's also got her own collection of Nutcrackers going, as you can see in the photo (below). We found a cute one this weekend that's actually an Advent Calendar...or, a Countdown-to-Christmas calendar. He seems to fit right in! The Harrod's bear on the right is from a trip to London a couple of years ago.

OK, so I did bring back the branches Mr. T removed from the bottom of her tree (we didn't want the doggies to do too much damage as they investigated...:), and I plan to place them in a basket on the MO porch, along with a red bow, ho, ho, ho. At least I won't be a total Scrooge. And, of course, I'm consoling myself with the vision of returning to the NC mountains next year, selecting and cutting down my own Fraser Fir...and then eating a yummy meal at the Daniel Boone Inn in Boone, NC. Ah...memories...ahead of time!