Christmas in Williamsburg

Last year at around this time and after seeing several specials on the subject, my sister and I decided we would spend Christmas 2008 at Disneyworld. Silly us. :-) As this Christmas drew closer (like, around sometime in August), I decided we should go to Colonial Williamsburg instead.

However, as the good Governor Gumpas would have objected, had he been around when I menitoned the idea at breakfast one morning...it was quite out of the question...an economic impossibility.

I was determined to do something beautiful and historical, though. So far, I have spotted three of our neighbors whose idea of Christmas decorating is to erect inflatable figures of The Grinch in their yards, not to mention all the others who have a variety of other "Christmas" characters well-lit and inflated in their yards. I wanted something lovely and elegant and real. After browsing around Paperbackswap, I settled on two books about decorating at Williamsburg.

Ever since Thanksgiving, I've been collecting fresh fruits and greenery whenever it was on sale. I purchased a fresh balsam wreath, a 25' red cedar garland, and a large bag of Red Delicious apples at Costco. Sixty key limes came home from Sunflower Market for only $3. Four bags of pine cones for $2.50 each from Michael's. Five pounds of oranges arrived from the grocery store for only $1.

A little thing called Operation Bridesmaid Dress (more on that later) had kept me from doing any decorating until today, but I finally managed to get my wreath done this afternoon. I think it's rather nice, if I do say so myself. Hopefully, the blizzard tomorrow will let up enough for me to get a picture of it hanging in its Red Delicious glory on the front door tomorrow. The garland is primarily to decorate the front door, and whatever is left of it will go on the piano and the buffet. My sister will be making pomandered oranges to arrange in pyramids for the tansu and the piano. Then it's only a matter of finding spots for the 18 candlesticks we discovered we own. (I always knew it was a lot...just not quite *that* many...)

As of now, I'm off to eat a hot bowl of oatmeal for dinner (yum), and then I will be hanging pinecones on velvet ribbon in all the windows...