Decorating the Tree

All over crafting blogland, people seem to be joyously decorating for the upcoming Christmas season: hanging homemade advent calendars, taking pictures of their families wearing new Christmas outfits, setting up their tree. I went for a walk today and noticed many of my neighbors hanging lights and setting up horridly tacky lawn-art. Now I'm starting to get stressed, even though it's still NOVEMBER and not yet Advent. My house is a bit of a mess right now and I'm determined to get it as clean and organized as possible before starting any decorating. That probably means that decorating won't happen for a week - more likely two.

I was able to do a little tree-decorating of a different sort this past weekend. The family and I went to Long Island for Thanksgiving and we were able to spend some time strolling along the beach. We found a tree branch stuck in the sand and decided that it needed to be decorated. So, we went up and down the beach trying to find debris that could serve as ornaments for our tree. It was a lot of fun - probably more fun than decorating our real Christmas tree will be. I'm trying to figure out ways we can incorporate scavenging for ornaments into our holiday traditions without ending up with a tree covered in garbage sitting in our living room. So far, I haven't had any brainstorms.