"Christmas is coming the geese are getting fat..."

I've always liked that old English Christmas song -."..won't you please put a penny in the old man's hat. If you haven't got a penny a hay-penny will do. If you haven't got a hay-penny, God bless you! "

Christmas IS coming and I'm trying to a bit more HO! HO! HO!and less BAA HUMBUG! than I've been tbe last two years. I'm 90% done with shopping and the rest is easy. I finished my 25 tags for our tag swap at the store.

I'm 95% done wrapping what I've purchased so far. I do have one, maybe two projects to finish for gifts - and the reservations are made for Long Island - Maggie, please make your homemade Baileys!

I'm so looking forward to spending Christmas with my brother and his family. I'm also looking forward to a New York pizza one night. I not only go home for the family, I go home for the food!

But I digress...I've managed to put up one tree - that's right, one, meaning there will be more than one. The last two houses we've lived in have had large picture windows in the front. I've always wanted to have one of those beautiful color/ornament/ribbon/trim/garland - cordinated trees - you know, like the ones in Macy's or heck, even Wegman's (this year's inspiration and shopping source). How bizarre is it that I bought 99% of the ornaments and decorations for this tree in a supermarket. Those of you out there that don't have a Wegman's, you don't know what you're missing! Alexa and I had lunch at Wegman's the other day and this is looking down from the sitting area to the center of the gourmet/deli/bakery/fish/meat aisle. You can see the sushi makers directly below us.

Like a good little do-bee, I ran out on Thanksgiving night, hit Michael's 50% off all artificial trees lighted over 7.5 ft. and by Saturday noon, the tree was up. I had boxes of coordinated ornaments in red, green, gold and white. I put all the ornaments on and lit'er up! From outside it looked great, from inside, not so much... it needed MORE! more balls, more specialty ornaments, more garland, more coordinating picks - you know MORE! So on the guise of picking up a prescription, I was the mad shopper gobbling up all the coordinated ornaments that went on my 'Wegman's' tree . I didn't even have to travel to several Wegman's to get what I wanted.

Now I just have to decorate the rest of living room, the dining room, the family room and Alexa's room - yes, she gets her own tree - green with pink, purple and lime green ornaments! I also have a little surprise for her which I'll post when it's done. Don't forget to check out the BSS Blog for pictures of our day after Christmas make n' take and some Christmas decorating photos.