I Put Christmas Up !

I did!

Yesterday was a "snow day" of sorts for me.

Since I'm retired, I don't really get snow days now but I was house bound.

Couldn't go out anywhere.

The lunch that I had scheduled for yesterday was moved up to the day before in light of the anticipated storm (women are sooooooo prescient aren't they?).  And we had a wonderful visit, my angel and I.  That's gonna be my new moniker for that particular friend -- "my angel."  Cuz that's what she is.  And she knows why.

Anyway, since yesterday was a snow day for the region, my cleaning lady couldn't show up either.

So that precipitated a total rework of my planned timeline for putting up Christmas.

And this timeline really works better all around, on a lot of levels.

I had been "bringing Christmas upstairs" for the past several days and our living room was getting quite cluttered with various and sundry boxes.

My plan had been to move all those boxes (along with all the wrapped gifts) to the screened porch for the few hours while the cleaning lady was here, let her do her thing, and then bring everything in and assemble my village.

Turns out with the storm hitting, had I done that, everything would have been caked with snow (you should see the porch now -- covered with the snow that blew in yesterday).

The village is all set up (it is never the same way two years in a row cuz I don't remember from one year to the next how I did it before).

The Creche is ready, waiting for the arrival of its special guests later this month.

The gifts are all wrapped and placed under the "tree" and none of them got snow soaked.

The stockings are hung by the "window" with care.

Now we'll just sit back and wait.

For somebody.

Or something.

It is beautiful to sit here when all is dark outside, with only the lights of the village and around the living room window lighting up the room.

The Creche is set up on a table just to the right of the village (you can see part of it in this photo).  Mary and Joseph are on the window ledge further to the right of that -- they will arrive at the "Inn" on the evening of the 24th of December.  The baby is hiding behind the Creche, and will not be placed inside until the morning of the 25th of December.  Notice the wise men on the window ledge to the left of the village?  They are making their way to the "Inn" -- they have a long way to go yet since they don't get there until the 6th of January!

Having done all that, today I will remove all the extraneous storage containers and boxes from the living room to the porch to wait until I reverse the process some time after the 28th of December (that is the date we will have "family Christmas" in this household).

Our cleaning lady will come in on Saturday to make up for the missed day yesterday so the house will be put back into tip-top shape again.

Now I think that was a fairly productive use of a snow day!