i'm not a scrooge, but "bah humbug!" anyway

Usually I look forward to the day after Thanksgiving when I put up the Christmas tree, but this year, I was very resistant to it. Just the thought of dragging out the tree, figuring out the lights and decorating it made me ill. So, I worked out a bargain with Greg that I would go shopping the day after Thanksgiving and the tree would be assembled and lit when I arrived home, so all I had to do was throw on the ornaments. This deal was certainly in my favor, as most deals are...

So, I came home to a tree that was assembled and half-lit. I was half-happy.

On Saturday, thankfully, Greg fixed the lights, which ended up requiring a defective strand to be taken off, so one part of my tree is a bit dimmer than the rest. I was simply not going to re-work the entire tree for a couple of branches.

So, I spent a couple hours decorating the tree. When I got the boxes of ornaments out, I immediately realized that I had meant to buy new garland this year. The garland I had used in years past definitely needed to go after last year, but since I was in my pajamas and feeling scrooge-like, I decided to avoid the garland altogether and just do the ornaments.

Here's one shot of the tree and I'll work to take better pictures in the daylight.


Tonight, I practiced taking photos in low-light using the tutorial Kelly posted here. In the past, I had always just set my camera on auto-everything and let it do the work, but adjusting the shutter speed to 1/50 and the ISO to 1600 really did the trick. I shot these using my Canon 50mm lens at f/1.4.
My pretty girl did the posing while this lazy one slept:
Yes, he sleeps with his tongue out. At least his mouth is closed.

On my last post, Stephanie P asked where we went antiquing. This is a photo of the front of the place in downtown, Paducah, KY. I'm not sure of the name or address, but if you're in Paducah, just ask anyone where the old hardware store is and they'll point you here.