Merry Christmas eve!

Well, we got yet another 15 cm of snow last night, and there's a big weather mess in store for today, too. There's over a foot on the ground in the woodlot; around the farm, it has drifted, so some spots are very deep and others less so. A white Christmas here!

Sunday was a very snowy, windy day. Nonetheless, Gordon went outside to adjust his Christmas lights. Here he is, peering in my office window as Tristan eats birdseed in the background:

Yes, his coat is VERY warm.

Two turkeys hunkered down and suffered through it. I think these same two turkeys are visiting regularly now. We get lots of turkeys, but I've had two outside my office window every day for some time now, so I'm going to say they're the same ones. Poor things, this picture doesn't do justice to how miserable the weather was on Sunday:

And here they are on Tuesday morning, feeling much perkier:

Back to Sunday. Ahem. Sophie! Tristan! You aren't BIRDS!!

And indoors to the toasty warm family room, where we put up our Christmas tree. Alex just sat back and watched the action (next to a weird-looking dog toy):

Can you spot the new Christmas ornament we got this year?

I saw this one coming, so I didn't put up any breakable ornaments!

Poor Gordon. He went and got the tree by himself last year and did a good job, so I let him do it again this year. He came back with this thing:

The photo doesn't do justice to the tree's misshapen ugliness. At the very top, it has almost a ball of needles/branches that look like a bird's nest sitting atop the tree. On the upper left side, it's like someone took a huge bite out of the tree. The back of the tree, which you luckily can't see, looks like an elephant napped on it. The whole tree is short and fat, but as it turns out, this is an excellent thing, as it accommodates our new feline ornament (see above) well. Touch wood, Naomi has not yet knocked over the tree. And the tree WAS cheap at fifteen bucks!

There were also a lot of dead brown needles at the bottom. We had decided we were going to get another tree, but when Gordon went out on Sunday, the local place was totally sold out of trees. Then the blizzard hit, so he came home. We decided to make the best of this one and I pruned it outside in a windstorm. Once we got it in, we realized that it's actually not too dry after all. I think the dead bits were quite old and not related to the tree sitting on a lot since July.

I am reasonably certain this tree did NOT come from a tree farm, or anywhere that they professionally grow Christmas trees. HAHAHAHA! And it doesn't appear to be a total firetrap as we first feared. I think it's a Scotch pine. The needles are fiendishly sharp; our hands were all scratched up after we decorated it.

After decoration, it looked like this.... still ugly, especially since half our ornaments aren't up, and there are no icicles, nor tinsel:

But if you turn out the lights, you can forget all that:

The dark fixes everything! But that tree needs more lights.

And in the end, we decided we like our funny fat tree. It has been giving us a good laugh and it's very sturdy for Naomi to sleep in.

Meanwhile, my friend Denise has been sending me Fancy Feast ornaments (mail ordered from the cat food company) for ten years now. On Sunday, I assembled them all on a very ugly Rubbermaid box which doesn't do the kitties justice. (The tenth ornament just arrived and isn't in the photo.) They are getting far too tasteful now. I liked it best when they were just beady-eyed little white cats. Now they're sending pretty snowglobes, tastefully frames, glass hearts... how can you laugh at THAT? Our very favourite is the cat on the divan.


Well to be honest, they are all our favourites. We get a real kick out of them every year. Thanks Denise!

My other favourite ornament is the Christmas pickle. It's a metal ornament shaped like a pickle that you hide in the tree. Whoever finds it is supposed to get an extra present on Christmas morning. Yeah, right.


Tristan kept a respectful distance as we decorated the tree, and made no effort to climb it, unlike Naomi:



He even enjoyed watching "It's a Wonderful Life", which we had on as we beautified our ugly duckling pine:


(Sorry, I did a terrible job Photoshopping his "red eye"!)

Have a peaceful Christmas eve, a happy Chanukah, or whatever else you choose to celebrate!