Up

The tree is.  Up.  Finally.  Oh, and decorated, too.  I had lots of help, of course.

I gave up on having real trees a few years ago - it's just too much of a nuisance for one person to get a real tree set up by themselves.  Plus, I've only spent one Christmas in my own home - I'd no sooner get it up than I'd have to pedal down to NC.  At which point the tree would dry out and start losing needles.  This year, though, Christmas is at my house (panic carefully swallowed down...), so I even paid a lot of attention to getting the limbs well straightened out.

The one problem - my artificial tree is in three pieces:

The pieces themselves aren't the problem - it's finding and connecting up all the cords for the built in lights.  Which is the reason I keep a short green extension cord with it.  It comes in handy when my patience with groping around and following lines along the trunk runs out.

I had even more help with putting on the ornaments.

Fortunately, none of the Mischiefs have shown any interest in un-decorating the lower limbs this year.  Although Perry did try to eat some of the plastic needles.

So it's up.  But I dare not put presents under it yet because Blu will open them.

And while I'm on the subject of Up - the antique pharmacy case is finally done, as well.  I wish I had taken more before and after pics, but the best I can do is that this:

...is finally this...

 

Not bad for a freebie.