Christmas Decorations

Sheila and I managed to get to the Christmas decorating a bit early this year so our home has been decorated for Christmas, inside and out, for the past two weeks or so.  For a few months, I was thinking we wouldn't do any Christmas decorating at all this year because I had been feeling so lousy.  Mostly, among a few symptoms, I was in quite a bit of pain and I was overwhelmingly fatigued.

I then had a few relatively good health days...  not to be confused with a healthy person's good days...  and the weather was cooperating for outdoor activities with some unseasonably sunny and warm days so we tackled the outdoor decorations.  The weather had jumped into the 70s on this particular weekend so we were outdoors.

While we were on a roll with decorating the outside of the house for Christmas, we then moved inside and put up the tree and the rest of the indoor decorations.  I started putting up the tree and put the lights on the tree but Sheila finished decorating the Christmas tree because, by then, just standing was far too painful for me.  My spine was screaming at me at this point so I found a spot on the couch for the rest of the weekend and the following days.

This year, I added voice control for all the Christmas decorations.  That makes it easy to turn the decorations on and off without having to go to a bunch of switches and outlets around the house.  All we need to do now is tell Alexa when to turn the lights on or off.  I could set a schedule but I prefer to choose when to do this each day.  

These are just some preliminary photos but here is a photo shot through our living room window...  and through a wreath hanging on that window... looking toward our trash shed.  

I showed this next photo in previous blog entry but here it is again.  I had to trim one of our trees of a few branches that were touching our neighbor's house so I made a wreath out of some of the boughs.  I like the way this wreath turned out!

Even our garden window gets a Christmas tree.  This window looks out toward the kids' playhouse which is also decorated...  

This next photo shows a bunch of reflections (although not as many as the first photo, above) while looking through the living room toward the kids' playhouse...

When we get some snow again (we've had buckets of rain and high wind the past few days and today it was in the 60s again!), I'll head back outside with a camera and a tripod to get some good photos of the house.  We didn't do a whole lot outside this year but we hung wreaths on all the windows and that looks nice.  Of course, as you see here in the photos, we also added some lights to the playhouse, the outdoor kitchen and the trash shed but there are no lights on the house itself, or the planters, or the trees.  

Anyway, more to follow on this topic when the winter weather returns.