It's beginning...

I was beginning to feel a little bah humbuggy about the impending holidays, but this past weekend seems to have lifted my spirits just a tiny bit.

On Friday night, we lit the Christmas tree at City Hall with the help of a children's choir, a bunch of firefighters, and a crowd of revellers. (No, really, they were revelling!) It was just enough to put a wee bit of festive into my step (and out of my wallet); that night I bought my first Christmas gift online!

I did my grocery shopping early on Saturday, which left me the afternoon to drag the Mascot around the new Target. While we were in the Christmas section picking out our annual ornaments (a game controller for him and a sequinned whale for me), the boy raised an interesting point - we don't have a tree. We did... but it broke last year after being over-adorned one too many times.

The second problem was that I didn't actually *want* another tree. Even in my ungrinchy state, I just wasn't feeling the whole evergreen thing. We need something lighter, funkier, less-cluttered...like this:

Cute, right? And it lights up!! We are going to decorate it with metallic balls in red and three shades of silver. And maybe something slightly rustic, just because that's my schtick.

There's plenty of room underneath for presents, but that is probably going to be a moot point as the kid seems to just want cash and contributions to his Euro-trip fund. Maybe I'll store the vacuum cleaner under there.