how early is too early

American thanksgiving is happening later this week and that always seems to signal the official start of the holiday season for our neighbours south of the border. For Canadians though, it's less strict, or at least it seems that way. Officially or unofficially, when is it too early to put your holiday decorations at home?

I know that some stores (Dollarama, I'm looking at you), had their Christmas stuff out when the Halloween decorations were still on the shelves. Home is different though, I can't figure out what the deal should be, probably because we never put our stuff up at the same time each year.

My feeling about it is, if the city has had it's Santa Claus parade, you're cool to start putting up your decorations, if you're so inclined. That's my unofficial signal anyway. In our town, the big parade happened this past Saturday evening. Where my folks live (just west of here), their parade was 2 weeks ago. I wouldn't think that the post-Santa Claus Parade "rule" would apply to them though, because their parade is before Rememberance Day.

Tricky huh? I read a bit about that this year too, about not starting into the Christmas celebrating until after November 11 - not an entirely bad idea if you ask me. We broke down and put up our outside lights yesterday. Not because it was the day after the Santa Claus Parade but more because it was around 15 degrees celsius in the sunshine here yesterday. On November 20, we put up Christmas lights in short sleeve tshirts and flip flops.

We're not the first folks in our neighbourhood to take advantage of the warm weather for decorating purposes. Over Thanksgiving weekend, when the temperatures soared to the mid-20's, a house around the corner from here well whole hog and hooked up (and actually turned on) their inflatable Christmas city. At that point, we hadn't even finished putting up our Halloween decorations. Maybe we were a little slack but I think that they were a smidgen keen with the helicopter Santa on their roof.

Maybe this year, I'm questioning the whole thing because the weather around here doesn't feel very wintery or christmassy, regardless of what the calendar says. Don't get me wrong though, I'm loving this weather and would happily give up shovelling this winter if I had to. I'm just not feeling the urge to pull out my Holiday Music Playlist quite yet.

Admittedly, the thing I like the most about Christmas is the lights. I wish we lived somewhere where it was cool have your whole house, covered in lights, all year long. We have strings of lights on our deck all year, partly because it lights up the yard for our dogs in the evenings and partly because both of us love them. This love of lights is also why, as soon as we tacked up the lights on the front of the house, I plugged them into a timer. Last night when they came on at dusk, I kept peeking out through the living room curtains to see them. They're very pretty!

boxing week traffic insanity

boxing week traffic insanity
Originally uploaded by Julep67

I began to take apart the christmas decorations today. For now, our tree is still up and the lights in our living room window are too. I put the tree up so late this year that I just don't want to take it down quite yet. I'm thinking that it might be a Monday project.

As much as I love putting everything up, it's been nice to see it go away all the same. My hallway seems much larger since I took the garland down. Once everything is packed and put away in the basement, I'll do a really good clean. It'll be a nice way to start the new year.

fun times huh? It's boring, I know, but it is the holidays and I'm supposed to be resting up, getting rid of the last little bits of the this cold. so there!

packed up

2007 punk rock calendar
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

packing up christmas takes a long time.

at least it takes a long time if you do it very carefully and neatly, which is what I tried to do.

yesterday was sort of funny, in a weather kind of way anyway...to me at least. on Sunday morning, we went out to do a couple of errands before all of the New Years Eve crazy people were out and about and I wore my boots, snowboots, because there was still some ice and snow on the ground from Saturday's storm. Yesterday, in the afternoon, I went outside to take down the lights from our porch and from the tree on the lawn. I actually wore flip-flops on the grass while I did this! It was that warm and dry and spring like. I didn't even have a coat on, just a fleece hoodie.

too strange. I don't really mind but it's very strange for this time of the year. I'm glad I took advantage of the mild temperatures to dismantle the outside lights. Once it freezes, it's almost impossible to get them down. Of course, I don't know that freezing is going to be a problem for us this year!!

Today, all I had left to take down and put away was the tree. All of the other ornaments were packed up yesterday. The tree is kind of piddly to do but I put on the first disk of the Freaks & Geeks DVD set and watched 3 episodes while I packed. Oh my goodness, I forgot how funny it was. Particularly, I forgot how wonderful Joe Flaherty's character was, very very dad-like and authentic I thought.

Well, now that Christmas is packed up and put away, and the living room is cleaned up (and the furniture all re-arranged), I think I shall go enjoy the sunshine that is shining in through the living room window. My goodness but it's been a gorgeous day!!

santa's big fall

I realized tonight, although it's something I've been thinking about for a few days now, that when one of your illuminated Santa's fall down from the window, it's officially time to take the decorations down.

I think I'll get a start on that tomorrow. That seems like a good "new years-y" thing to do.

Happy New Year gang. Have a fun and safe night!