Christmas Fun Stuff

We’ve been having a fun weekend here at the Jenny and Jonathan homestead. All kinds of stuff has been happening, and now we’re about dead tired.

We finally got the tree up on Thursday. Though we had a minor tree-falling-on-Jonathan incident while putting the lights on it (someone needs to design a half-decent tree stand, or rather I need to find someone who has designed a half-decent tree stand), it seems otherwise steady. We started decorating it a little bit that night, and completed most of it today. There are still a few boxes of fill-in ornaments in storage. I’m going to look at them tomorrow to see what, if any, we can hang reasonably well. There are definitely still spots for ornaments, but we have to call it quits at some point–there’s only so much time available!

After work on Friday, we stopped at Sam’s Club to get cat litter and this nice 9′ pre-lit “slim” tree for our foyer. My Mom saw it advertised in their holiday flier a few weeks ago, and we’ve been thinking about getting it since then. We finally did, and were surprised to find it on what appears to be an unadvertised sale for $50 less than on the tag and flier. No complaints here! We set that up this afternoon. We had a spare angel who now graces the top of that tree, and I think we’re going to add just a few plain baubles to it, just to keep it simple. It looks great with the garland all lit up that Jenny did a few weeks ago. It’s all on a timer so that we don’t have to touch it, and the house looks festive even when we’re not here. Yay!

This morning, we went with our friend Elaine and her friend Maggie to the Allegheny West Victorian Christmas House Tour, which is a lot of fun. Allegheny West is a neighborhood on Pittsburgh’s North Side, near the CCAC main campus. Jenny and I have gone for a few years now. This is Elaine’s second year, and Maggie’s first. It’s always fun to see what people who seem to have huge sums of cash can do with their houses. At the same time, lots of these people don’t have huge sums of cash, and got into the neighborhood when it was like what our neighborhoods are like now. A lot of those folks put in a lot of sweat equity on their houses, so it is fun to see them show them off to all of us. Our tour started shortly before 11AM, and we were there until about 2:30PM. We then went over to Max’s Allegheny Tavern for lunch, which has become somewhat of a tradition now for the after-tour event. We finally left there at almost 4PM and took Elaine and Maggie back to Elaine’s house, then we dropped the car off at my parents’ house before taking our car back home (we borrow my parents’ SUV for this trip because it is a lot more comfortable for four people in winter gear).

Elaine herself has put a lot of work in on her house. She gave us a tour of the completed project before we left for Pittsburgh this morning. She has done a great job with her place. She was in a position to do all of the paint stripping and other major work before moving in. It looks awesome.

Now I’m reheating some chicken that I froze after the wedding shower this summer. Yum.

jonathan