De-Kringling

I had an 8 a.m. meeting today. It was 7 degrees when I left the house. Delightful! Fortunately, it was not windy so that made it much better. When I was done with that I came back to the computer at home to work all day, and have not left my house again.

I am meeting Greg and Terry, and maybe Teresa, for dinner so I'll need to start the bundling process again, although it's a toasty 21 at the moment. I am just about to get officially tired of winter. And, frankly, if we're going to have cold, I'd like to have snow. We need the moisture. We still have some on the ground, but we are so low on water here that we need every bit we can get. I'd much prefer it coming in the form of snow than ice, but I'll take it however we can get it.

I have been working on getting the Christmas stuff put away. I have made more trips up and down the basement stairs than I can count. And I have the "wall o' plastic tubs" down there, full of xmas goodies. The "wall" has become more a "cube" of tubs, really. I am happy to say that this year I added only ONE small tub of stuff to my stash of Christmas goodies. ("Small" being defined as a 20 gallon tub, but compared to the 45 gallon ones that is small.)




This year I also bought some laundry bags to contain the smaller trees and be able to hang them up. So far this seems like a much better system than them being piled a corner of the basement, which was my previous "system."

I should be embarrassed to show that corner of the basement, but there you are. There's another row of plastic tubs you can't see in this photo, plus a couple of huge ones that hold bigger Santas and other misc. things. I guess everyone has their things, and Christmas is one of mine.

I finished taking down the tree last weekend - it took three weekends to get it done. I have all the boxes of ornaments stored, the tree out in the shed, and the lights packaged ready to take to the basement so I'm making progress. I think I have everything off the shelves around the house now. I just need to finish packing it away and get it back down to the basement. I'm hoping by the end of this weekend that's all done.

Sometimes I think I'm a little nuts for doing all this, but it's so pretty and sparkly when it's done. In case you've forgotten, the tree is pictured here.

After I get all this done I will need to clean up all the broken bits from where the tree was. There is some attrition every year. When I'm buying "special" ornaments I try to get them in the "less breakable" variety. I have some glass things that are really special to me, but I try to get less fragile items.

I am, however, ready for Christmas to be packed away for a few months. By fall I'll be eager to do it all again.

In the meantime I've been working on the MHA Garden Tour. It's set for June 24 this year and it's our 10th anniversary so I want it to be extra special.