december 4th....you're kidding, right?

i don't know about the rest of the world, but here in dallas, tx, it's been in the mid 70's lately.  absolutely does not feel like christmas time. 

below you will find a picture of my $40 prelit craigslist christmas tree.  small, i know.  2 days after getting it AND completely decorating it, i had to take everything off of it because the bottom half of the lights went out and could not figure out what the problem was.  the lights weren't budging, so what did i do?  i spent hours literally unwinding them and cutting them off of the tree.  then, i redid the tree with all new lights and put all the decorations back on.  grueling.  especially because it shouldn't be hot in my house in december when i'm trying to fully decorate a christmas tree with two little boys begging for my attention every minute.

anyway, it's finally done.  whew!