a beautiful sight.

My friend BurghBaby has organized a show off your Christmas Crazy link-a-thon at her site, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to participate. BB’s way crazier than we are about the decorating thing — she has like five trees to decorate, and we have just the one. Or maybe two. And there are those others…

The Crappys aren’t ones to go overboard when decorating for the holidays. The crazy part usually enters the picture when we wait too long to get started and are left scrambling to get everything done with deadlines looming.

Like tonight, for instance. The Wife’s mother is due to arrive in about three hours, and we’re just starting to decorate the tree. After shopping all day and then cleaning the house.

Yeah. We’re crazy.

Our routine in the old apartment was pretty set, after being there for 13 Christmases. We’re doing many of the same things in the new house, but we’ve had to make some adaptations — different size porch, upstairs windows that need some kind of decorations, an actual freaking mantle from which to hang stockings with care, etc.

We also have the space to do some new things too — we’ve added a small tree outside, and we — mostly meaning The Wife — are already talking about how many more lights we can hang outside next year. Inside, we have some extra stuff too, like my pride and joy:

So — let’s get started. The little new tree, next to its blue spruce cousin:

The boxes where our ornaments live 11 months a year:

While we’re hanging stuff on the tree — and listening to the annual holiday version of “Rhythm Sweet and Hot,” the excellent big band program each Saturday night on WDUQ-FM — take a look outside:

The new tree works pretty well:

I grew up in a house where you stuffed ornaments on every available branch of the tree. That was easier with fake trees — and without a wife who preaches moderation, at least in the tree-decorating sense — and since our tree this year was actually a little smaller than we usually get, we didn’t let the ornaments get out of control. But this, a thrift-store find, was way too cool to pass up:

Miles loves helping with this:

And here’s the completed tree, folks. Our ornaments are an odd mix of classics — The Wife’s angel collection, for example — pop culture — several Looney Tunes ornaments are among my favorites — and, yes, sports. Because I know Burgh Baby is curious: there are just seven Ohio State ornaments on the tree this year.

Moderation in all things — even football and Christmas.