It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It's been such a hoot decorating our new house for Christmas. For the most part, except for the Christmas tree -- more about that later, I have just opened the same boxes with holiday decor that I have been opening for decades and spread our familiar stuff around. Stuff that I've lugged around through four houses now with such good memories firmly attached.

But even though they are all familiar things, how different they look when placed in a new surroundings.

When I told my friend Karen that we were looking to move to a different house, she asked me what my must-have criteria was and when I was mulling that over, she told me that I simply had to have a window over my kitchen sink so that I could decorate it for all the seasons. And she was right.

The Silver Star range of mountains are so pretty decked out in snow. My kitchen window items haven't been placed against a stunning backdrop such as this before.

One of the first boxes I asked John to get out was the artificial Christmas tree. At 7 1/2 feet tall, I wasn't sure how it would look in a room with an enormously high ceiling. I'm not sure how high it is, but when we put that tree up it looked pathetic. And lonely. And short.

So my son and daughter and their family were here that day. I was making noises about being all frugal and making this work somehow and all that blah blah blah. And behind me I heard the kids placing bets on how quickly a new ginormous tree would arrive at our front door.

Yeah.

It came a couple days ago, a big ol' ten-footer. Which still looks a little short in here if you ask me. But it's beautiful so we're keeping it.

John, bless his heart, assembled and decorated this thing since I was a bit out of commission having had my hip bursae injected that morning and after receiving the usual firm lecture about rest and ice being my best chance at three months of pain free hips. So my butt was firmly glued to my ice pack layered recliner.

He did an amazing job, I think. I love this time of year.