Making Christmas

Last week we were busy with work, but this weekend we started getting our house ready for Christmas. We will be spending 6 days surrounding Christmas in Toronto with Jeff's family, but we will be home most of the month and I love the warmth and cheeriness of a decorated house.

Koshka is helping with the lights

This is our first Christmas in our new home, and somehow that makes it seem all the more exciting to decorate. Since we own this house, things like figuring out the best way to put up the lights seem like good time investments, because we know that next year we can do the same thing.

Getting a Christmas tree is a little bit different here than it is in Oregon. There aren't Christmas tree farms just outside of town, and even if there were, going to cut down a Christmas tree in this weather would be ridiculous. Yesterdays high temperature was something like -28°C/-18°F, and with the wind chill it was about -40°C/-40°F. I will not go outside in that weather other than to get to the car, but Jeff actually went running when the weather was something like -34°C/-29°F, and I don't know how cold with the wind chill. Anyway, it would be completely ridiculous to go and try to cut one's own Christmas tree in that weather. So instead, Jeff went to Lowes and picked out a tree from the options that they had all baled up out in their garden center area. We planned on decorating the tree once he got it home, but when we put it in the stand and cut the baling strings, this is what we saw:

 The tree was completely frozen, and we had to let it thaw out before we could decorate it. Thawing took maybe 4 or 5 hours. This is a step in Christmas tree preparation than I am not used to. I am also not used to the extremely sweet fragrance of balsam fir. Is smells just like a candle that I used to have that was supposed to smell like Christmas trees, and I always thought that the candle was wrong, because it didn't smell like Douglas fir. Now I know that Christmas trees come in more than one scent :-)

Last night Jeff had a friend over to watch one of his favorite movies, Aliens, and while they watched the movie I decorated the tree.

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 And this afternoon, I read student papers sitting on the couch in the warm glow of the tree lights. I do love this time of year!