Stockings Are Hung by the Chimbley with Care

I've been doing Christmas decorations for basically the whole last week -- not that you'd be able to tell from the outside, because it's freezing cold and we have all the shades pulled down tight to keep the wind out. Drafts suck. Anyway, I've done three trees (work, the lights at my mom's, and my own), plus my cube decorations, and the stockings at home. A couple of glimpses:

Our tree this year is smaller than last year's, but not by much. The specs: Fraser fir, about 5½' high, smells delicious. The branches are nice and soft and "relaxed" by now, and there is plenty of room for all our new and old ornaments. Instead of the customary gold-silver-and-white color scheme, this year we added some aqua, pink, lime green, and purple, which we mixed in to what we already had. I'm not going whole hog into the color thing -- there will never be colored lights on my Christmas tree, ever, not as long as I live and breathe -- but perhaps eventually I will loosen up enough to put all my "Star Trek" ships on a tree someday. When my kid is older and I don't need to worry about the cats breaking anything.

Never colored lights though.

Official light inspectors. Totally gratuitous.

I somehow managed to combine three different sets of decorations here, and I'm not sure that any of them match my house, my other decorations, or my personal style, except for my stocking -- and it's obvious which one is mine because (1) it's got an "R" monogram on it, (2) it's purple, and (3) it's made of TONS OF EFFING SEQUINS. I LOVE sequins.