Tree Trimming and Carrol Singing

    The time has flown this past week and a half.  I didn't even realize how many days had past until I woke up yesterday and flipped my calendar to December.  I mean really, can you believe that it's December already?
     I managed to survive National Novel Writing Month, but even though I wrote all of those thousands of words, I did not finish my novel.  Turns out, I put more words into parts of my story than I thought I would originally, so that I reached my word count but not the end of my plot line by the time the month was over.  I'll have to keep writing then.  This novel will be much longer than what I planned, I think.
    Thanksgiving here was wonderful.  We didn't eat any turkey this year.  No, we went with German food for the main course.  Rouladen and purple cabbage.  For dessert, a chocolate chip skillet cookie. It doesn't get much better than that.  Don't know what rouladen is?  Well let me tell you.  Strips of beef with onions, bacon, pickle relish, and mustard rolled into it, browned and then slow cooked in gravy for hours.  It's so tender you don't even have to cut it.  The flavors from the meat rolls seep out into the gravy to make the most delicious gravy you have ever tasted.  Seriously, the gravy you could actually drink.  It's practically the whole reason you make rouladen to begin with, just to get that gravy.  Better than turkey?  I think so.
    ( I might have tried to get a picture of the food for you, but telling everyone to wait to eat for a moment so I could snap a picture would've been like jumping into a pool of piranhas and hoping they wouldn't bite me.  Impossible, really.  And dangerous. )
    We stuck with our tradition of putting up all our Christmas decorations on the inside the day after Thanksgiving.  Friday was a day of Christmas movies and music playing in the background while we decked the halls and threw tinsel around.  It was also the day that Christmas music was allowed to be played in our house.  Day before Thanksgiving?  No Christmas music allowed.  Day after Thanksgiving?  Bring out the jingle bells and ho ho ho's.
    It really doesn't take long to decorate the house.  What takes hours is the Christmas tree.  But in the end, it is very worth it.  Nothing matches and it doesn't look fancy, and that is just the way I like it.  I love to see it glow and ago searching through it in the dim light like our very own game of I Spy.
    All the Old World Christmas ornaments sparkle.  Homemade snowmen and garland add a soft and slightly fluffy touch.  Red candles are an old German tradition to remind us of our ancestors.  There are a few strange looking items, like a starfish and a burnt gingerbread heart ( yes, that's a moose sitting there behind the burnt cookie ).  Some wooden switches from St. Nick sit up there to remind us of when we were children and weren't exactly on our best behavior.  And if you look closely, you might even find a little turtle hiding in the tree branches.  All of this topped with tinsel that glitters in the tiny, colored lights.  I couldn't love it more.

    I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you are now belting out the carols at full volume now that it's over ( because I am and I really don't want to be the only one who's hurting their throat here ).

Em  :)