A Tour of My Christmas Decorations
Hubby and I have decorated our apartment up for Christmas all nice and spiffy (I’ve gotten over my pre-holiday humdrums), but since we have hardly anyone to invite over to see the decorations I thought I’d put them up here.
Here I am with our Christmas Wreath. it's inside, because nobody but us ever see's our "front" door anyways
Luckily for us, I had accumulated almost an entire tree worth of ornaments before I ever moved out of my parents house, this did mean however, that the huge box of cheap ornaments we bought last year weren’t needed for the tree. I put them to good use anyways, on top of a cabinet.
Nothing but gravity, and lucky placement is holding those up there.
Hubby helped me set up the tree, but I did most of the decorating, although he helped with the tin “tinsel” ornaments.
Our Christmas tree
I’ve included Pictures of a few of our ornaments, so you can really see what it looks like.
I played french horn in elementary school. As a result I own more french horn ornaments than anyone else on the planet.
This is our Precious Moments "Our First Christmas Together" ornament. Obviously it was new last year, not this year.
Hubby's Mom sent us these, we have a whole set of them. Super cute!
This ornament has no particular sentimental value, but Hubby took a darn good picture of it, so I decided to show it off
Not included in the picture tour of our ornaments are several other things. You’ll have to imagine the snowman clock, which chimes a different Christmas carol every hour. On our glass door, we have a lovely, sparkly static-cling christmas wreath from the dollar store (am I classy or what). Also from the dollar store, the perennial favourite felt banners. One is blue, has snowmen and says NOEL. The other is red, has santa and reads “HOHO”. Yep, you read that right, not Ho Ho Ho, just Ho Ho.
Agatha Christie Shortage
I’m not a person who has a favourite book. I love too many different genres and styles to name one book as favourite. I do however think that I can safely declare a favourite author. She has written 70 some-odd books, and I’ve read them all. In fact I’ve read them all numerous times, and they’re still my go-to books when I need something light. As the title of this post suggests, that author is Agatha Christie.
The thing I find with her books is they’re always enjoyable. They’re often silly, seldom realistic, and occasionally way out there, but who cares. The Whodunits she wrote are darn good puzzles. And most often I either forget how it ends between readings or, with some of the more beloved ones, remember the ending, and spend the whole book gloating as I recognize the pointers, and wondering how I was so dim as not to figure it out the first time through.
I can’t even say that I have a favourite Agatha Christie novel, although I can name my top few: Murder on the Orient Express, the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Cat Among the Pigeens are right up there. (Pretty much I love Hercule Poirot) Favourite short story collections include: the Tuesday Night Club Murders, and Partners in Crime.
I have a problem though. My mom owned everything Agatha Christie had ever written long before I started reading them. This means I never built up a good Agatha Christie collection of my own. I just borrowed Mom’s. Once I started university, I started to rectify this, mostly by asking for some of the omnibuses etc as birthday gifts. As a result, I have about 20 of her books here with me.
The problem with only having 20 Agatha Christie’s in this city, is that I’ve read them all at least once, and several of them twice since I moved here a year and a bit ago. Now, I can read these books over and over, but three times in a year is a little much. There’s no time to let any of the details fade, at all.
So I need more, that’s the obvious solution. But now we stumble upon the fact that I’m a little bit cheap, and a little bit illogical. There’s no good reason for me not to pay $10 a piece for some of these books, but it seems like way to much for something I’ve read before (this is where the lack of logic comes in, that $10 is a much better bet than the $15 or $16 I’ll spend on something I’ve never heard of because it looks interesting). I seriously need to find a used book store in this city. But until I do, at least I can whine about it on the internet.
The Mistborn Series
Hubby and I both recently finished reading the Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson. Hubby declared the third book, The Hero of Ages, to be the best end of a fantasy series he’s ever read. He then spent the next week or so hounding me to start reading it right now so he could listen to me speculate about how it would end.
Personally I was just thrilled to actually read the end of a fantasy series. Especially one that actually ended after three books, the way so many series now seem to continue indefinitely, or at least until the author dies (as a side note, this is the author who will be finishing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, now that he has passed). I was starting to think that the idea of ending your story after three books had died with Tolkien.
I do have to agree with Hubby that it is an excellent book. And one that ties things up very nicely. This book ties up loose ends from earlier in the series that I didn’t even realize were loose until right before they were resolved. The story was super interesting and engaging. And I was up way to late two nights running finishing it. It didn’t actually keep me up half the night the way the first one, Mistborn: The Final Empire, did but it was close.
I’m torn about which book in this series is my favourite. I think that distinction goes to the first one. It was a really, really, really good book. The second one, also very good, was probably my least favourite of the three. I know it was hubby’s least favourite. It had the most politicking and the least action of the three.
While I wouldn’t call this series light reading, it wasn’t heavy either. The novels deal with some grown up themes like loyalty and leadership, but they are quick paced, and easy to read. There’s never any feeling of slogging through to the good parts (a la The Two Towers) because most parts are good parts. If you’re looking for a good fantasy, I recommend these.
