Merry Holiday Season!

Hope you're all simply having a wonderful Christmastime!

The question of late is "How did you get that tree in the house?"  It took all my strength.  I thought I had lost strength due to aging because I've never had a tree that was so heavy.  I think I paid $45 at Johnny Appleseed's.  It's a very thick balsam fir.

My decorating this year is somewhat scaled down.  I don't have bows and ribbons.  As you can see I can't commit to either colored or white.  I'm just impressed that this year the tree was up the second week in December.  Last year I think I got a tree on the 23rd.  Choices are greatly limited by then.

I hosted Christmas dinner.  I guess my sister told us six months ago or so that she had to work (she started a new job), as if we would remember.  So I scrambled and got everything together at the last minute.  I've been baking a lot - homemade caramels, turtle candies and toffee.  Also a lot of pies.  I've regained my ability to make a proper crust.  When it's the right consistency you can make fancy lattice tops like so:

Outside I went with a blue theme.  I credit my friend Tina, who's a style icon around these parts.  She had these pretty net lights, but they don't twinkle like mine do!

With flash.

Without flash.