It's Ornamental

We put up the Christmas tree on Sunday.

Today I finished my Christmas shopping.  Including stocking stuffers.  And wrapping.

I'm done.  And before you roll your eyes and put me in the category of "one of THOSE people", I would like to state for the record that I have NEVEREVERNEVER been an early Christmas shopper.  Procrastination is an area where I excel.  In fact, I've been known to dash out on the 23rd only to find myself surrounded by  MEN (we all know THEY wait until the last minute).

I have no real explanation for why I'm finished early this year.  The only thing I can come up with is: the kids are fun to buy for.  They're at the ages where they've really developed a clear "taste" for what they love.  Dave and I spent one afternoon in the toy section of Target and we'd done 90% of our list.  We dashed from aisle to aisle spotting dozens of things they'd LOVE.  The hardest part was narrowing it down.

Oh, and I suppose I should tell you that we've decided not to exchange gifts with any of the adults on either side of the family.  So my list diminished to a measly SIX this year- all of them children. 

I probably should have mentioned the SIX PEOPLE at the beginning of this post.  It would have put the whole "I'm done" thing into perspective, eh?

How about this?  I'll show you what a procrastinator I can be.  Check this out:

This is an example of my Christmas tree ornaments.  We have about seventy-five wee little frames on our tree.  Each is filled with a photograph of someone in our family. 

Dave and I hand-made the ornaments for our first Christmas together.  It was a project of MAMMOTH proportions.  The first step being dinner with our grandmothers and great-aunts and cousins to procure old photos.  It was such a fun time visiting with relatives about their history.

For instance, here is a picture of my paternal grandmother standing in front of the orphanage where she was raised. 

It's one of a very few photos of her as a child.  I see a bit of baby Paige standing there, don't you?

Once we had all the original photos, we made color copies (remember, this was 1998, there weren't scanners and photo-printing computers).  Oh! And, we didn't like the color of the frames, so we painstakingly spray-painted all 75.  Then we cut out the photo copies to size and mounted them with spray adhesive.

It was a daunting project.  One that I would never DREAM of undertaking today with my busy life.  But back then, we had oodles of time after work and on the weekends to fritter away doing silly projects. 

Ah, those were the days.

Anyhoo.  I'm telling you this story so that you can now judge me.  You see, not one time, EVER, in the intervening years have I updated the pictures on the tree.  Which means my 13 year old nephew is on the tree AS A NEWBORN.  My own children?  Yeah.  Nowhere to be found.

Essentially, if you were in my family in 1998, then you're on the tree.  If not?  Well, file your complaints with management.

See there?  I'm a master procrastinator.  It's not so impressive that I'm done with my Christmas shopping now, is it?