We decorated early this year, right at after we took down the Deepavali decorations in mid November. We let the kids decorate the tree any which way they wanted.

A friend mentioned that buying a live tree this year was their "I'm not going home for Christmas moment." You actually can buy live trees here. They're air shipped here from places like Europe and usually delivered right to your door. They're such a specialty thing, they even include the tree stand. It's recommended you water them surrounding the tree trunk with ice cubes; Otherwise the water evaporates too fast. And, you probably just want to run the aircon for the month. I don't even want to consider how many needles fall off a day.

We put up our 5 foot fake tree. I pulled it out and moaned about how little it is. MsC loved it, because she can reach all the way to the top. After I got the lights and restrung the cranberry garland around it, we let the kids decorate it any way they wanted. Jonathan put a crackling fire on the TV to add some ambiance.

We only fit about 1/2 of our ornaments on and so Jonathan and I only added a few of our own most special ornaments to let the kids have enough room for all of theirs. I've noticed that the kids have been adding paper ornaments that they've made as the season progresses.

We also pulled out our little tree that Jonathan and I used the Christmas we lived on the sailboat. I think it's 18 inches. We use it as our advent calendar adding numbered paper ornaments each day.

A neighbour was giving away a tiny hot pink tree. I took it and let the girls decorate that on a later day with tiny ornaments too. I've seen a few all white trees around Singapore and this really cheesy part of me wants to add a little 4 foot white tree to our decorations. Christmas just isn't going to look the same when it's 30 C outside, so why not embrace it.

Dreaming of a white Christmas. 

Mostly I haven't bought a white tree, because where do you find lights on a white string? Do you do white lights or multi-coloured lights? And, where do I store it after? Our regular Christmas tree already takes up too much room in our condo's closets.

Our photos from Christmases past found a home and our Christmas themed books filled a basket. There are 26 books, with a couple of them being more of a Winter theme. I hide them away in the Christmas decorations box all year. My nutcrackers and Granny's angel are on another bookshelf. It's looking like Christmas in our house.

Don't climb on the bookshelf, but that's our basket of Christmas Books. 

It took a few more weeks, but my "We're not going to be home for Christmas" moment happened when I bought a big ham. It's hard to find gluten free and dairy free hams here, so when I saw it, I snapped it up even though we will probably save it till New Years. I'm also stocking my freezer with Marks and Spenser's gluten free Shortbread. Apparently, they always run out just when you want it. I've already eaten 2 packages, opps.

But walking home with my heavy ham, it hit me that we will eat this ham alone - no one's coming to Christmas dinner.

It's all well and dandy to reason, that we probably would be eating alone in Canada too, because of COVID. But, last year, for our first Christmas away from home, we had a full Christmas dinner with my Mom and sister days before Christmas with presents and everything right before they returned to Canada, so I skipped feeling homesick altogether last year.