It's beginning to look a lot like...

We did some shopping today.  I have been wanting to get the house decorated, but the timing just hasn't worked.  When we got home today, it worked.  Joan put up some decorations inside while I worked on lights outside.  We had already decided we weren't going to go for the Clark Griswold Award this year, since we were getting such a late start.

The house is pretty compact, so when we are home for Christmas, we just put up the small fiber optic tree.  Yep, it's small and artificial... the ends of the needles light up... I like it!

Joan put a bunch of other Christmassy stuff up around the house.  I was particularly fond of this Friday Harbor tree ornament...

Santa on a seaplane - cute!  We have a few dolphin sculptures around the house - this one got a Santa hat...

While she was working on that, I sorted through lights, planning to keep it simple.  It took me a few minutes to put this star together...

It's more impressive with the lights on... well, if the lights worked.  This saw duty on top of the boat during last year's Lighted Boat Parade.  Apparently the salt spray got to it... about 10% of the lights worked.  Options: string new lights, go one-by-one through the lights to see which one (if it is only one, and it probably isn't) is non-functional, or chuck it and move on.  I picked option C (for chuck it).  Instead, I put a red lighted bow as the center, and blue and white icicle lights across the railing...

And, the results...

Certainly understated.  Looking down the canal, there aren't many places with lights; don't know if they aren't here, or if the Christmas spirit hasn't kicked in, yet.  I've always felt that Santa needs some lights to home in on. ;-)