Silver Christmas Tree, originally uploaded by punquin.

I need to do some blogging catch-up! I’m on a computer all day, but I’m too busy working. After work, I don’t want to be on a computer! I promise, I am constantly write blog entries… but it’s in my head while I’m driving or showering. Maybe I can plug a flash drive into my ear? Hm…

I can’t believe it’s December already! Thanksgiving was low-key, but nice. We went down the street to the house of our friends, Ronalyn and Dan. Benny got to come along and play with his “girlfriend”, Esa. They we watching another dog, Cash, and older black lab. Benny spent the entire evening showing off his mad fetch skills and wouldn’t even stop to eat dinner. Our dinner was great. I ate sides – which is fine by me. I had my own special meat-free stuffing. Yum!

I have no idea what we are doing for Christmas. We haven’t been doing presents for the past couple years. With the new house and all the upgrades (flooring, fence) for the past 2 years, it hasn’t been feasible. Now with the economy down the shitter, it seems like another repeat. It’s fine, I’m a big girl. But, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss our Christmas Eve tradition of sitting by the tree opening stockings and presents together. I’ve resigned myself to Amazon window shopping, a time-wasting pastime that I highly recommend! 😛

I do love Christmas trees and love, love, love sparkly lights, though! I’ve only been putting up out big 6-7′ fake tree every few years (last time was in ’06 for our housewarming party) because we having done much for the holidays and it’s a huge pain to deal with spacing all the wire branches out (especially if you are an OCD perfectionist like me!) I got it in my head that I wanted a little silver tree this year – something so totally fake and wonderful. And, without a million branches to mess with! We found the perfect little tree at Target for $20. The branches were very sad a bare – perfect! I put it in the corner, pushed all the branches to the front and wrapped a matching garland around the trunk to fill it out (my secret weapon with all fake trees to make them full). I got a set of shatterproof, brightly-colored ornaments, since the tree was dog-height. It looks cute and gaudy and matches the disco ball in our living room. Heh.

This past Saturday, I did our holiday lights out front. Last year We decided to switch to energy-efficient LED lights. They aren’t cheap, so we had only bought the strand lights for the railings of our porch. This year, I had Danny pick out icicle lights so we are now 100% LED. He also got a great power outlet that is photo-sensitive, so the lights turn on at dusk and off at dawn.

The presents I’m definitely doing? Gift bags I put together for my favorite dogs at work (using toys I get wholesale and all-natural dog treats) and gifts for my co-workers and work secret Santa. I’m also starting a portrait of a dear friend’s recently passed dog.

I’ve still been relaxing and de-stressing by playing Rock Band 2. I’ll make that a separate post, though.