Here are the last two photos of the village under our Christmas tree. The bakery in the top photo is one of my favorite pieces and Jim was happy to find this pretty church this year. I found him an old Barclay pastor, lead figure to put in front of the church. The whole village looks even better this year since Jim took the trouble to light up all the buildings.

Yesterday's studio plan changed when Jim suggested we put up some outdoor Christmas lights. Hauling out the step stool, and then finding out that we couldn't get it in a good, stable position because of other shrubs near by, we wound up teeter tottering (me) on a very wobbly stool that wanted to sink into the over saturated soil, with Jim trying to keep it and me from keeling over. We just threw the first group few lights as high as could be reached. We got the lights on half of the evergreen tree only to find that the male plug, would not fit into the next two sets of older lights which only have two small female openings. Because it was too cold and getting late, we decided to deal with the problem today.

This afternoon Jim removed those lights and put them on the adjacent, weeping cherry tree, and I used the other two sets on the Japanese maple we had planted this fall. Just those few sets of clear lights on opposite ends of the front yard, really brightened up the house for Christmas.

Cooking a roast chicken dinner and some computer filing and email, took up the rest of the afternoon.  Now it's time to relax and finish watching the original "Miracle on 34th street.", and afterwards I might even have time to read some of the Sunday paper. It's been a good day.


.