The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer

Still have a few more additions in the next week, but progress is pretty too!

One of my earliest Christmas memories is watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The poetry of Dr. Seuss being read by Boris Karloff is contagiously happy.

For several years I have had a plan in my mind to help spread the message "But this... this sound wasn't sad. Why... this sound sounded glad. Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing, without *any* presents at all! He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming, it *came*! Somehow or other... it came just the same. It came without ribbons!... it came without tags!... it came without packages, boxes, or bags!"

My favorite scene. The Grinch's heart growing.

I started with an easy project of packages, boxes, and bags. Then I got busy, and procrastinated too long. Thanks to an early family Christmas celebration in TN, I've had Christmas on the brain for a while this year. I grabbed a pencil, scrap plywood, and my jigsaw before Halloween. I can hear my cousin asking why I started so early. I don't live in Texas it gets cold, and it is not fun cutting out intricate lines when your fingers are frozen. Cutting that early gave me plenty of time to paint in my basement. Since My Vet likes to change houses every few years, I painted both sides with all the details so that they would be reversible. That took extra time, but I had it.

Keeping it real, this is how my house looked most of the weekend.

I did most of the construction and had them roof ready. The sleigh was heavier though and needed extra bracing. My Vet aka "Night in Shining Armour" stepped in to figure that out. He also got to head up to the roof for installation. I am willing to tackle lots of things, climbing on the roof is not one of them. While he was up there, he also got to hang the C-7 lights along the ridge. (I did change out any broken bulbs before he got up there). I'm thinking he earned shrimp scampi and cheesy biscuits in the very near future.

Cold and dark, yet he's on the roof

quickly trying to get'er done.

Thanks to the Vikings going into overtime, we didn't get all of the lights up on Sunday. Instead he finished them up Tuesday before the temperatures dipped further. We aren't the Griswold's (yet), but I think it still looks pretty good!

Notice the fresh snow? It's not too cold so it's a

big sloppy mess, at least the sun is shining now

Since it took extra days to get the outside done, I even had time to get to the inside. This is from last year, I'm working on a special kid tree that I'll share soon.

 

As I was outside taking this, a neighbor stopped to say how much he liked it! The kids and I love watching cars stop or slow down. If you see us gawking out the window wave! (We try to be sly about it so the drivers don't get creeped out or anything.)