Pie, Trees and Christmas decorating

My blog friend, Carmen (Waxed out Creative Life") posted a photo of a pumpkin pie she made...and I noticed she had added darling pie crust cut outs onto of the pie....Alan surprised me and ordered some Wilton leaf cooky cutters as an early Christmas present...as I had some sweet potatoes, made a pie and placed these across the top..I think it turned out really well....and was sure fun to jazz up the pie a little..

I've posted about sweet potato pie before and also the pie crust...as my older readers know, I hunted for years for the perfect pie crust recipe as it alluded me....finally  found one that I am using now which gives good results every time...you can read out it here

We have the tree up and decorated...last year we bought a new artificial tree as our old one (which was beautiful) was destroyed in the garage fire we had earlier in that year......I haven't been able to take a nice photo of it yet as the light hasn't been right...its been raining and dark but hope to soon...
 I am so glad to have a photo of the old tree in its glory....

The new  tree is much shorter and we put it up on a chest...the cats love to sit underneath it and have been good about not climbing or bothering it....so far anyway! how do you like the bar doors? when we moved in..the doorway had a solid full door which leads into the kitchen, neither of us thought that was very safe and so ordered these..

Alan put up the lights for outside...its mostly done, just a bit left to do..we have about all the Christmas shopping done...still have to wrap..and I still need to get Alan something but other than that....it will be time for candy making and baking a few goodies......thinking of making caramel corn ...and also divinity if the weather clears up..not a good thing to do when its humid.....of course, we always make a pan of fudge also.....there goes the diet!