Whine & Cheese: Halls Decked, Check!

It's threatening to be a frenzied work day... but while I am in "hurry up and wait" mode, let's see if I can get in a blog post about this past weekend's activities.

As the title suggests, we are as decked out for the holidays as we are going to get!

With the weather still a bit dicey on Saturday (we had a rare for Phoenix all-day rain "event" on Friday), we concentrated on the interior.

First order of business... the holiday card! As I hinted, this year I decided on something other than the standard boxed card. More details... it's a photo card this year and if my regular readers think about it for a half a split-second they can probably guess what's the subject matter was and why it threatened to be an ordeal. The "staging" ended up going surprisingly well... and after a couple dozen pictures were snapped... the decision was to go with the very first photo taken (of course!). I will share the "official" holiday photo with you closer to the big day!

The crazier part was printing out the photo. I cropped and "fixed" the picture on my computer and put in back on the memory card. The first place we went to didn't instantly print out the pictures for you (it was more than 1-hour thing??), so headed to Target where I knew they had a printer. My cropped/fixed pic didn't work... so ended up starting from scratch on the original photo and re-doing the fixes. Needless to say, Target was a crazy place to be... but we took advantage and were able to buy the photo holiday cards (slipping in the newly printed photo) and we also bought some replacement lights for the front yard.

Next, it was a trip to Petsmart to buy another doggie gate/pen. There was no doubt in my mind that our tree (and the lights on the tree, ornaments, garland, etc.) would not be in peril if it was not protected... again, not naming any names (but it rhymes with fa-la-la-la-Locky).

In the afternoon, other holiday indoor decor was distributed about the house... the tree went up... and post-dinner it was trimmed... all without any major incident.

Sunday we tackled the yard. And while ultimately, it all came out fine... I pretty much thought I was going to have a mental breakdown (or two) and/or not be in a relationship by the time it was all over. Being a brand new decade older (my quads are pretty much "toast" today)... and almost reduced to tears over tangled strings of lights... has me thinking next year's display should probably be scaled back/simplified. Patience wore thin/frustration grew in distributing the lights across the yard... trying not to attach too many strings of lights too each other... etc.

Upon returning from Sunday dinner out... we were pleasantly surprised to pull up to the house and see that all the lights were all on ... no blown fuses or electrical fires. Everything really looked quite good with only a few minor adjustments to be made... though the few thousand lights in our front yard still looks like something Santa's frickin' wonderland right across the street meekly burped out.

(I likely won't bother taking pictures of the front yard this year... pretty much no design changes from last year)

I am very happy to have made some holiday progress... it was really weighing on me... which seems so anti-holiday, but I think something where many of us go vs. the warm and fuzzy spirit.

Now, I just have to get around to some shopping... though, at this point (when did it get to be Dec 3rd?!?!), I'm thinking the cross-country family members are going to have to be satisfied with some mail-order basket-y stuff and gift cards... which would be perfectly fine for me in return.

UPDATE:

I'm quietly working and suddenly hear the whirl of leaf-blowers... the landscapers are here for their once a month visit of the front yard! Dozens of meticulously placed, but easily moved, strings of lights strewn around our yard!

In the immortal, guttural, and insanely over-promo'd word of Desperate Housewives' Lynette Scavo... and post-tornado'd Wisteria Lane...

"Aaaaarrrhhaaaaaaa...aaaahhhhheaaaaaahahhaa!

(deep breath)

"Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrhhaaaarrrrhrhhrhrrhrhrhhrhaaaaaaa!"

All appears to be fine... though I'll take a more detailed walking tour of the yard a bit later.