Christmas Tree (Outside Version)

Friday afternoon, as we headed downtown to do some window shopping, we admired the beautifully-decorated evergreen outside our neighbor Mary's place. We mused about how it would be nice to have a nicely decorated tree outside our house too. Before I could even get to thinking much about how to make that happen, we'd run into Mary, who is both a wonderful neighbor and the co-proprietor of an amazing shop downtown (swag, at 423 Division Street). And before I knew what was happening, Mary had arranged a date with Julia and Genevieve to decorate our tree with her leftover lights and such. This was pretty exciting to them (and to me).

Saturday morning, Mary showed up at 8:30 with a huge stack of decorations, but rather than starting, she told the girls that first they had to have  "design meeting" at the coffeeshop downtown, to discuss the decorations over hot chocolates. The girls' excitement meter went up to about 12 out of 10.

At the coffeeshop, I sat nearby (because Vivi was still a little nervous), but not too close (because I wasn't supposed to hear about the actual plans).

After downing the hot cocoa (Mary's treat!), we headed back home and the girls got to work. First, they untangled a few of Mary's many, many strings of lights. Then they started wrapping the lights around the tree and adding other stuff, like huge glittery silver stars, shiny tree boughs, and pink ribbons. In short, they girlified that tree.

Mary seemed to enjoy the whole experience as much as the girls did, and they loved it. I was worried about Vivi, who's not always so good with people she doesn't see a lot, but she did great. And Mary didn't even balk when both girls, complaining of cold fingers, went inside to lounge in front of the fireplace while Mary finished the tree - which looked great after dark. This photo doesn't do justice to its warm pink glow, but my goodness am I thankful to have great neighbors like Mary!