yeah, first lobster!

Christmas has come early to our flat. i'm going to nte this week and dave's going to be in mudgee for the next two weekends so there wasn't going to be a chance to put up the tree when we both could do it until midway through december. and you do need to put up a tree with someone else, don't you? so i went and bought a tree on sale from Kmart (my first fake tree since childhood - and i actually rather like it!), collected the box of decorations from mum's, and we put it up yesterday.


this is going to be the first Christmas Day i host at my house, so that's why i get to have the tree (normally it's at mum's). at dave and mum's suggestion, the tree is set up in the curved window of the living room and looks like it was just made to go there. we put lights up around the windows too and i had to go outside and have a look and, well, i got a bit excited. i don't normally get that excited about Christmas until the week before, and even then not so much about the decorative side of it.

the other thing i noticed in going through all the decorations that we've amassed over the years is how odd some of them are. there are bright red shiny apples - why, i don't know, but we've had them ever since we lived in singapore (we came downstairs one morning to find the house mouse had eaten some of them, which was kind of amusing really as they're made of polystyrene). there are lots of little wooden toy ornaments with bits broken off that i can't quite bear to throw out. and there are, strangely enough, a number of ornaments featuring ducks. my favourite one of these is pictured below in one of the fuzzy pics i took with my phone. you probably won't be able to see it too well, but take my word for it - ducks present at the birth of Jesus. it's a beautiful thing.

Karen: So what's this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, first lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.

from Love, Actually