Operation Christmas, Part 1

In the past I have taken Thanksgiving week off, which has been nice. However, this year I thought I would get a leg up on the Christmas decorating by taking off Wednesday through Friday of Thanksgiving week and then today and tomorrow.

It was a busy, busy day. I was up at 7:30, had breakfast, and was listening to BBC Radio 4X for the remainder of the day. I put away all the Thanksgiving items from inside; unfortunately I couldn't put the box away because it has been raining all evening and several of the items on the porch were still wet. I went out during a break in the harder rain to take in the banner, the mailbox cover, and the wet things from the porch and put them into the garage to dry. Then I cleaned off all the surfaces in the dining room in prep for decoration; got the table in the hall as well, and cleaned out the foyer until it was a blank slate, down to polishing Mom's tier table and the horse lamp.

I did put up the wreath on the door and the Christmas banner, put up all the window candles and the wreaths on the interior doors, placed the bird wreath on the door out to the deck, and, because I already had the rocker and the Laz-Y-Boy pulled out to clean the divider, put up the decorations on that portion of the room.

The weather has been interesting today. It was warm enough this weekend to wear short sleeves, and was 61°F this morning when I woke up, but a cold front was coming our way. Around noon I had a sandwich and got dressed and went out to Lowes to buy more blue bulbs for the candles. I keep all the Christmas lights on timers, and have been frustrated in the past few years by the older timers I have that are worked with removable pins that tend to get lost. Lowes, I remembered, had smaller timers with pull out clips instead of pins. So I bought three to replace the pin timers.

On the way home, I decided to stop at Home Depot to see what type of Christmas items they had this year. As I walked in the door, I was surprised to see two packs of timers. Not only were these two-packs less expensive than one timer at Lowes, the timers themselves were even smaller. I bought two two-packs and put them on the window candles; they appear to work fine. I have put all the pin-operated timers into the donation bin.

Anyway, in the little over an hour I was out the temperature dropped ten degrees, from 60 to 50, and just as I got in the door, it ticked down to 49. With the wind having picked up, it was a bit "airish" out—I loved it! The house was still so warm from yesterday's weather that I didn't have to change out of sleeveless working clothes until after supper.

James took some chicken strips we had left over (there weren't enough for salad) and combined them with some Classico pasta sauce and sausage tortellini from Costa's Pasta. It was quite good if it did come up on me all night.

My gosh, now they are talking about snow flurries tomorrow morning!