DPP Day 8: Holidays in the Office

We're having a cubicle decorating contest this year. While winng isn't super important to me, I do tend to geek out when it comes to theming up something.
This is my cubicle as of last week. I've got a few more ideas up my sleeve, but I'm not sure if I've got any remaining motivation!



What you can't see is the little, three-foot white Christmas tree with blue and silver ornmaents to the right of this picture, or the icicles hanging from the bookshelves in front of my cubicle. Now to find more snow roll and window snow spray...

Well, nuts.

Sunday, we took down our Christmas decorations and packed them away. Then Monday I came into work and realized, ugggh, I have to take down the office tree and decorations, too.


It's so much fun in early December to pop Elf in the DVD player and get into the holiday spirit by putting up all the decorations. But come early January, you're so full of cookies and gingerbread popcorn and turkeys and hams and Christmas parties and cookie exchanges that taking everything down is such a chore. There's nothing fun about putting it all away and shoving the boxes back in closest and garages that don't have enough room anyway.


Bah humbug!


So Monday, I took down the office tree and packed it away in the supply closet, which took some serious negotiating.


And Tuesday, I found one lone pink ornament that didn't make it into the boxes. Curses! In the process of taking the lone ornament's picture, I realized there were two mini trees and a Santa bear still sitting on the front of my desk. Nutter butter! How did I miss all of this yesterday?



Oh, well. Guess I'll be diving back into the supply closet tomorrow!

5/365

Oh, Corner Tree

We have a small English living room, or lounge as they call it here. It doesn't have enough room for our furniture, let alone a Christmas tree. So when we celebrated our first Christmas in England last year, I finally conceded to my husband's pressure of getting a fake Christmas tree. It was my first fake Christmas in my then-28-year-old-life.

Although the act of conceding was previously unthinkable, it became an option when I encountered the Tesco corner tree. The corner tree was invented for tiny English lounges like ours. It's not a full tree. It's slightly more than 25% of a regular tree. A little wedge of a tree, a pie slice if you will, that is meant to look much fuller then it is. I saw the practicality of such an object in our lives and allowed this tree that had never seen soil or light to enter our home last year.

Let me say this of my tiny corner tree: it fulfills its duties of taking up as little space as possible. It requires me to only store one piece of furniture in the garage, and for that I thank Tesco.

Another great thing about having a tiny tree in a tiny space is that it takes a very small amount of gifts to make it look full. In these times of economic hardship, perhaps all families should invest in a corner tree!

On the other hand, it is still a corner tree. A sad imitation of the real thing. Not sad because it's a fake tree. Certainly there are very nice fake trees that fool many visitors into thinking their needles are real. I've seen such trees. A corner tree does not belong in the same category with such trees.

The thing is, a corner tree has no illusions of grandeur. It knows it has no chance of fooling anyone into thinking it once knew the smell of fresh air and the taste of rain. It doesn't expect visitors to gasp and awe at its green glory. It won't hope to hear children singing, "Oh Christmas Tree" as it is adorned with ornaments and garland and lights.

I think, though, that the corner tree is okay with its fate. Despite the fact that it will never star in a Christmas commercial or movie, I think the corner tree is grateful for a home for the holidays. Even though it may not share the glory of a tree in the front window, it still serves proudly under the weight of sentimental ornaments. It stands tall (or tries to) over the coveted gifts wrapped beautifully beneath it. And it folds its arms thankfully after New Years Day as it's returned to it's narrow box for safe keeping until the next year.

And you know what? I'm okay with that, too. No, I may not have the most glorious tree on my block this year. It may pale in comparison to our previous real Christmas trees. But by golly, I love my small English corner tree, and I look forward to spending this and two more Christmases with it.

Snow and Cookies

Well, we're in the midst of our first snow for the season! Snow in England is nothing like snow in Nebraska. Here, if you get an inch, you're doing good. So without the threat of serious snow and the need for a snow blower, it's actually fun when the white stuff makes an appearance!

Man, snow is an amazing thing. Even our normally abysmal backyard full of gravel and dog poo looks great under a blanket of snow!

Caleb is a little under the weather, so we bundled him up real good before taking him outside for a few minutes. He reminded me of Randy Parker in A Christmas Story.

Here is Caleb venturing out into the backyard. This isn't technically his first snow. It snowed earlier this year, and I actually took a couple of pictures of him bundled up and sitting in his Bumbo seat in the backyard, but I accidentally deleted them from the memory card before I had downloaded them off the camera.

He's still not walking, but he stands really well unsupported. He shows occasional mild interest in walking, but nothing serious yet.

Our squadron had a spouses cookie exchange yesterday, which was a lot of fun. I brought home a TON of delicious cookies, in case anyone wants to stop by! Tina, one our spouses who is the queen of all things crafty and creative, made up little recipe books for everyone to take home with the recipes of all the cookies that were brought.

Here's the table of cookies that people brought in to snack on. I made Iced Pumpkin Cookies (the ones on the middle plate), which were really freakin' good, in my humble opinion! ;) It was my first time making them, and they were so soft and yummy!

And here are the cookies people brought in to send to our troops down range. We have a few teams deployed right now and will be sending two dozen of each kind of cookie brought in to our guys to let them know we're thinking about them this holiday season. We had 16 people come, so that's nearly 400 cookies we're mailing out!

And here I am with my favorite cookie monster!

The combination of snow, Thanksgiving on the immediate horizon, and lots of Christmas cookies has put me in the holiday spirit. My husband played Christmas music this morning, and I'm seriously considering bringing out our awesome Tesco corner tree today. We'll see. The sun is out now, so I don't suspect the snow will stick around much longer. Tomorrow the squadron is hosting a Thanksgiving meal, so I better get started making my pumpkin pie for that!