For all my excitement about decorating for Christmas this year, it sure was a long time in coming. I wanted to wait until after Thanksgiving to do it, but we were sick over Thanksgiving. Then suddenly every nook and cranny of the house needed to be cleaned, both as part of my fall cleaning (which always seems to stretch into winter cleaning) and also in preparation for our Christmas company (some of which is coming this weekend and some of which is coming next weekend), and somewhere amid the dusting and the scrubbing and the happily filling of Goodwill boxes, the decorating just fell by the wayside.

If you managed to get through that entire extraordinarily long and clumsy sentence, here’s what got my Christmas decorating finally back on track.A cheap little poinsettia from Waremart. My mom almost always has a poinsettia at Christmas, and since it’s such a cheery, decorative flower in and of itself, I usually can’t resist getting one either. ...continue reading →