Making Christmas.

Greetings to You.
Here's hoping you had a wonderful Christmas season and are looking forward to a great New Year!

We've been a mix of busy and relaxed.

Christmas brings it's own work but we were able to set aside house construction for a bit and have a little holiday fun beginning with a visit from my mom. She was here Dec 12-19th, so that's when Christmas started for us.

This year we enjoyed an experience we've never had before, we hiked out to the back "35" with a sled and a saw and harvested a couple spruce trees for decorating. Kinda cool to get your Christmas tree from your own property!
The Youngest got one for her room, partly since she has the biggest bedroom which can accommodate a tree, but also because we were trying to make the house as festive as possible for Gramma's visit.

There is a third reason.. we are the proud owners of two Christmas tree stands.

Being I knew we would have a real tree this year (our "backyard" is full of them) I snatched up a stand as soon as I saw one at the Salvation Army thrift store. All the stands were priced $4.99, except the one I picked. Of course it wasn't until I got to the cash that I realize that there is no price tag. I apologized and told her that all the rest were priced for $4.99. She gave it to me for $3.99 since I was honest. Cool! Discounts at the thrift store, I'm OK with that!

A couple days later, I am in the second level of the wood-shed outbuilding. One half of the flooring up there seems a little rickety and so I have "barred" it off with some orange, surveyor tape. All of us have walked across it at some point but I don't need guests falling on through and injuring themselves. Well, I guess I have only ever been up there in the late afternoon when the sun shines in through the west window making the East half look even more dark and scary and so between the rickety floor boards and the darkness I haven't explored that area of the building. Imagine my surprise and slight annoyance after just purchasing a tree stand,  when I ventured up there in the morning with the sun shining brightly in the East window and what should I see at the far end of the rickety floor?

A Christmas tree stand!

Well, I didn't stay annoyed for long. Instead I quickly came to the thrilling decision that we'd have TWO trees and left it at that.

Along comes the prepping for Gramma's visit. The newer and much cleaner stand gets used in the bedroom. We'll clean up the dirty, wood-shed one when we put up the main tree later.

All goes well with tree number one. Although I gleaned from that experience that "installing" a real tree is much more work than one might guess.

The day comes for tree number two to grace our living room with it's beauty.  I begin to clean the second tree stand only to discover that it had a hole in it and wouldn't hold water. Blah.
That'd be the reason John Smith left it behind in the first place I reckon! haha.

Well, we weren't about to take the first tree down to use the new stand and neither were we about to go without a tree in the living room. So we Macgyver'd a milk-jug into that leaky stand to hold water and after a little bit more "work" (albeit fun enough work) we had a not-quite-Charlie-Brown-but-almost-tree in our front room.

We were ready for Christmas.

Almost ready that is. I still had to put my wood-stove and skills to the test for Christmas baking. Thankfully my list of goodies has considerably shrunk over the years to only three or four special things that we are pretty sure Christmas can't be done without. I am of the strong opinion that far too much sugar is consumed at Christmas and being it comes at us from every which way, I refuse to be the main source, but I will make a couple things to keep up special traditions.

Well, the wood-stove complied. Christmas was safe again this year even with the challenge of making cookies in an oven that is 200 degrees in one spot or moment and 450 degrees elsewhere.
The trick? Small pieces of wood added frequently. DO NOT leave the oven and it's contents unattended. Make use of the timer. Rotate trays often.  It was kinda hard not to be overly proud of myself as the baking was turning out. :)

Christmas brought another first for us. It was the first time in 26 years that our family was divided for the celebrations. I can't deny, I shed tears. Thank goodness for Skype and Amazon. Gifts were delivered and we could visit using today's amazing technology.

I had planned to have a Christmas greeting and walk-around video of the house to post on Christmas day, but turns out I had a doozey of a headache and even had to miss the festivities at the S.S.I.L's

The grand tour will have to wait.

But the place is shaping up. We had the neighbours in for "a bit of Christmas" and they were blown away by how much we have accomplished in such a short time.

I'm glad they were impressed. I'm still looking forward to the day we'll have a shower and bathroom sink.

Until then?  We are becoming experts at packing our stuff for having showers at the S.S.I.L's. We rarely forget the deodorant or towels anymore and it no longer feels strange to brush my teeth at the kitchen sink.

But here's to the up-and-coming New Year and the day when we'll have more then one source of running water in this house!

And may your 2017 be blessed with something wonderful that you have been anticipating as well!
Cheers!