Getting ready

For winter.  For Christmas. For the cold.  Today was spent Christmas shopping (we made a significant dent!), mulching the garden, and hanging Christmas lights.  We aren't going to turn the lights on regularly until after Thanksgiving, but it's much easier to put them up on a nice day instead of waiting for a cold day.  And we may have them on next weekend: we are hosting the first Christmas of the season with my grandpa before they head south for the winter.  I'm still debating on how much to decorate; even though Home Depot had trees for sale when I picked up mulch today, that's a long time to keep a tree alive.  They also had some nice evergreen centerpieces so I'll probably go for that option this early in the season.

Also in preparing for winter, we are finally looking into getting blinds after nearly two years in our house.  Most of the windows (we only have 6) have some sort of curtain on them, but not all are thermal curtains.  The biggest cold source is the patio door, which has absolutely no window treatment.  I just didn't know what I wanted there and now white vertical blinds sound great.  It will also be nice to have the added privacy, though the fence does a decent job of blocking the back window.  We visited both Lowe's and the Home Depot, now we just need to decide which to go with.  I just want them done at this point.

Although it seems early for fall to be over, we did get 3-4 inches of snow earlier this week.  A bit of a freak storm where we went to bed to driving rain and were expecting an inch or so.  When I opened the curtains in the morning, I gasped.  Our dog was so excited to play in the snow and I think a bit sad (and confused) when the backyard was mostly clear at the end of the day.  I love snow, and although the weather has been relatively nice after the winter weather, there are still piles that have escaped the sun and it's a nice reminder of what's around the corner.

In other news, we had our neighbors over a few weeks ago (which we've been talking about doing since this spring) and had a nice time.  My mom and family friend came down this week to see Wicked with Kristen, Allyson, and I (we have season tickets to the Civic Center) and it was a phenomenal production.  I had seen Wicked with my sister a few years ago and wasn't impressed, and I'm not sure why.  I knew all of the music and the story on stage wasn't the same as what I had pieced together in my mind so I think I was a bit underwhelmed.  Between then and now I have also read the book (which I found somewhat strange) so I knew more of the back story, but I thought this stage production was great.  Both of the leads were amazing vocalists and very believable in their roles.  If you are in the area, I would highly recommend seeing it (again).

I hope everyone is adjusting to the shorter days and the cold--the holidays will be here before we know it!