A Getting Ready for Christmas Weekend

I lied. I don't have a Show Us Your Life post. Kelly's Korner was featuring Christmas trees (she has four!). Since we don't have ours yet, I'll have to miss out. We do have other decorations though. When I got up in the morning I straightened up and put out some of my snow men:

These guys greet us from the wall cut-outs between the hallway and the dining/living rooms.

These are some of my favorite little snowmen. The upside down guy is one of my absolute favorites - you can stand him any way you want. I made the little guy wearing the blue and purple hat and mittens when I worked for a paint-your-own pottery store.

After we went to a funeral yesterday (Mr. Kingston's high school friend's father passed away) we had a late lunch and then went shopping together. He got his Christmas gift from me - a Blackberry - and we got just a little gift shopping done for a couple other people. Then we went shopping for decorations. We got new stockings, lights and ornaments for our future tree, and lights for the balcony. It looks awesome, and I'll have to take a picture of it tonight.

I got us cheap dollar store stockings last year but thought that new nice ones were in order for our first married Christmas. At some point in our browsing, Mr. Kingston made a comment that we could choose another style in a few years, and when I told him that my parents still use their stockings from 30 years ago (and mine at my parents' house is from my first Christmas) he got serious about picking the perfect ones. We chose these:


His is the red one at the top, then mine, then Paisley's (purple) and Clover's. I had visions of getting The Girls huge stockings and stuffing them full of toys, but since Paisley got sick we agreed on no more plush toys, just in case. That eliminates about 90% of dog toys, so they'll mostly be getting little treats.

When we got home, we decorated, drank our Starbucks peppermint mochas, and then played Yahtzee together. This morning, I baked 5 dozen cookies for my cocoa bar at work. I decided on ice blue and red mittens and blue and white snowflakes. We're going to go visit friends in a bit and introduce them to Clover, so I haven't started, but they'll make a nice project either later this afternoon or tomorrow evening when Mr. K is working.

Last year we went to Zoo Lights and we decided that we'll go to Glendale Glitters this year instead. I'm hoping for next weekend - we drove through Old Towne Glendale and everything was so festive and pretty, so I can't wait! We'll hopefully also get our tree next weekend, so then I can post pictures of that. It's really beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Oh! I have pictures from one of the traditions I blogged about last week, the family search for our Christmas tree. Here's how it goes:

Mija points

...Dad taps

...and shakes

Mom shakes her contender...


and a winner is chosen. He looks awfully smug.

I don't have photos of it lit up, but I thought I got some pretty good shots of the typical Choosing of The Tree.