Christmas in November

We're having an early Christmas this year. We got bored last week, so we went out and bought a new little artificial tree, some colorful lights, and ornaments. We brought it all home, and decorated. The crazy things you do when it's 1 a.m., you're really bored and wide awake.

You learn a lot about someone when you go Christmas tree shopping with them for the first time. Especially when you have to agree with them on what kind of decorations you want on your tree, after you've agreed on what type of tree to get in the first place. Ours is 4.5 feet tall, with fluffy bristles. We both liked it from the start. That was the easiest part. We discovered that Jon is a colored lights kind of person, while I prefer white lights. He picked out a large, fluffy bow tree topper. I picked out a slim, copper-colored star with cutouts in the metal. He grabbed some fun, multicolored glass ornaments. I showed him some charming cloth toy ornaments. Neither of us were really enthusiastic about the other's finds. So we put it all back.

We ended up getting the white and colored lights, and some red, gold, and turquoise glass ornaments. Oh, and a red ribbon for our "garland." We didn't know how it would look together, really, but we figured it looked all right together in the bottom of our shopping cart. So we spent too much on it all, and drove home. Once we arrived, we pulled all the parts out of their boxes and set about combining them into what we were going to call our very own Christmas tree. The most daunting task of the entire project was choosing which setting to use for the colored lights. There were 12 settings to choose from. Most of them belonged at a rave, with a blinking strobe light and a mirrored disco ball. But we finally found one that didn't make me wonder if I was going to have a seizure.

We placed the finishing touch of our tree topper at about 3 a.m. It's a silver heart, with an engraved ribbon made of metal across its horizontal axis. "Our First Christmas - 2011."