Sunday Afternoon

Nearly all of our leaves have fallen, so it is beginning to look like early winter here. The farmers have finally been able to harvest some of their crops without being rained upon, for which I know they are all thankful. My days have been spent mostly watching Olivia, Allison, and Kale, and then from 5:30 until bedtime (in my case around 1:00 a.m.) I do whatever I need to get accomplished and try to squeeze a little "me" time into the day. Many days that means falling asleep in my chair while I try to watch the news of the day!! Some evenings I do manage to get some rug hooking finished, even if it is only for a few minutes.

Sunday afternoon I decided to go to Jeffrey Alans to look at Christmas stuff. When I arrived, an employee handed me a form and told me to look for the decorated Christmas trees that they had placed around the store and choose which one I liked the best and sign up to win my favorite tree. There were about 9 trees from which to choose, but I had the hardest time deciding which one I liked! I have very primitive taste when it comes to decorating, and none of the trees were at all primitive. They had one that they called "Country Manor" which had lots of "lodge" type ornaments, but it really didn't appeal to me. The colors were bright Christmas green and red, which I normally don't use at Christmas. Some were very traditional with lots of satin ribbons and bows. Many had crystal and glittery ornaments. There was one tree that had a black and white theme which I didn't think of as very "Christmasy". I finally decided that if I were ever going to choose one, I needed to look at the artificial trees UNDER the decorations to see which one I liked. We always buy a real tree at Christmas, so we don't own an artificial tree (except for a few primitive looking small ones that I place in different rooms.) Finally, after about an hour of looking at all the trees over and over, I decided to check the box next to the black and white tree. The tree itself looked like a Frazier fir which is the variety of real tree that we normally buy each year. It took me so long to decided upon the tree for the drawing, that I didn't get to spend much time actually looking at Christmas decorating items!! I'm not holding my breath about winning! I'll have to plan some time to go to Michael's and Hobby Lobby, too.

Some of my favorite places to go at Christmas time to look at decorating ideas are three garden centers in our area. They usually have great ideas and it is just fun for me. I usually pick up a magazine or two and look for ideas in them. Last year Paula Dean had a great Christmas magazine with coverage of her trip to Old Sturbridge Village (I think that was where she went!) Lots of great ideas (and recipes) in those pages.

Well, I still have a few chores to get finished before I give up and go to bed! Hope you have a great rest of the week!