Bah Humbug and Natures Bounty

As you may know, they have already started playing Christmas music on the radio at the start of last week and every time I heard one, I would reach over and turn down my radio,  saying to myself, gawd it's not even December yet! 

Then on Saturday, on my lunch I find myself drooling, when I spied at the local grocery store all the  gorgeous fresh greenery and decorative shiny balls, pine cones, faux pomegranates all on long sticks,  oversized large berries in red and gold and picture perfect birch logs for your urns. No word of a lie, I could have dropped $100.00 easy but that wasn't going to happen, but what it did do, was

it somehow got me into the spirit a little already!!!!

There are those people,  who are all ready for each and every holiday season with tons of time to spare and as much as I wish I was,  I admit I am not one of them but then when we were blessed with unseasonably sunny, warm weather this weekend we decided to take advantage of it for once and put up our Christmas lights instead of doing the usual freeze your hands and bum off thing. 

 So while I still had visions of gorgeous urns dancing in my head, I coerced

 Todd to drive me to cut branches from some road side trees for ours. I wasn't sure how hard it was going to be to find some nice ones but we only had to drive east for a few minutes and then took the next dirt road north. I always wanted to see what kind of houses were on this dead end road since I drive by it on my way home from work each and every day and much to our surprise there was only one house on the entire road which meant lots of trees belonging to no one were mine for the trimming. 

The first stop, I excitedly jump out and am looking way up at some beautiful feathery branches to trim that are mostly out of my 5'1ish" reach, then I look down to my absolute horror to find at the base of my feet a half eaten massive bird carcass!!!  Of course I was freaked out and had to ask Todd to cut my branch that I couldn't reach but really I just couldn't stand the site of that poor dead bird anymore and couldn't wait to get back in the truck.

We  stop a few more times and I make sure to properly and responsibly trim the trees and end up  getting my feet soaked in a mucky area just to get to some red dogwood branches. At this point Todd keeps saying to me, you've got enough, you got enough but I know it takes a lot to make a nice urn so of course I ignore him and keep trimming.

Once I think I may have enough, we go back to the main road on the hunt for some fallen birch logs and I have almost given up when Todd spots a bunch of large branches just off the road and thankfully not in swamp land! 

Then when we are almost back at our front door, literally just a few doors down we make one last stop at the side of the road to trim some gorgeous red sumac. 

When I get back to the house I trim some stunning blue green spruce branches from our backyard  trees. We added some leftover potting soil to stick the branches in and after layering my branches I topped it with some pine cones I already had and some silver disco balls I bought from the bargain store for $5.00 each last year.

Then to make it just a little more earthy and rustic instead of chopping up the leftover large branches I decided to just casually lean them on either side of the door for some visual height and texture.

And while I'm at it all, getting more and more into the spirit, I can't help myself and end up bringing out my mini Christmas tree for the front porch.

LED lights will get nestled in the branches for a pretty night time display.

To be honest it was really hard to walk away from that grocery store without spending any money for our uns but I am so happy that I did and ended up with stunning urns without spending a cent and so I can officially say, I'm in the spirit,

well,

almost.

Are you?