Seasonal picspam: Family Christmas tree (with bonus dog) and a crazy local light show.

[juushika]

Every year it goes like this: We procure a tree (sometimes my parents have it when Allie and I come home for the holidays, sometimes Allie and I go with to get it—this year it was the former). Papa drags boxes down from the attic, wraps the tree in lights, and then wraps the tree in wooden cranberry garlands because they're my favorite Christmas decoration. I sort out ornaments and decorate the entire tree. When it's 95% finished, Allie puts her birth ornament in a special spot, Mum decides where her birth ornament should go and either Papa or I hang it, and then I put on finishing touches and fill in gaps. The end.

This year, Mum managed to sort all the Christmas stuff while I decorated, and we got rid of a few big boxes worth of the sort of kitschy stuff we don't like but have managed to collect—I hope it made someone at the local Goodwill happy. Last year I leaned red and gold with the decorations; this year, motley red, relying less on the sets of ornaments I love (the piles of wooden mushrooms and brass bells) to mix in more of the unique ornaments in our collection. It's a little more folksy than my usual taste, but I like the chance of pace. The tree this year is a Nordmann Fir, which was a joy to decorate.

So nothing special I guess but: hey look, a Christmas tree. (Fun game: count the Starbucks ornaments. There are more than a dozen.)


Jamie we are trying to take a picture of the tree, not the dog.


This was the first ornament I put on, and more or less the one I used as inspiration.
Driving into town on Saturday—after my parents found the house, and met my cat, and briefly met Dee; after we picked up my sister and went out to Thai and got coffee; after we made the drive home—as we were reaching that point where you feel like you could almost walk home from here if you weren't so tired, we passed a side street and Papa and I glanced out the window and both did a "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT WE ARE MAKING A LOOP TO SEE IT AGAIN."


That was this.
This is the sort of light display that makes the house across the street light up, too. And it animated. And it was set to music. Multiple songs worth of music. It was somewhere between awesome and horrifying, so one night when Devon and I were driving back from errands and dinner we went down the same road and I had him look down the same side street, and we did the same loop and then he got a video. Unfortunately we didn't get really audio, and it's blurry, and you should still watch it.

Meanwhile, this is for Dee: Wizards in Winter.
There's a newer, clearer version out there now, and I honestly do not care. The Wizards in Winter Christmas light display is my favorite YouTube video perhaps of all time, I watch it every year, and now so can you.