Malls, Christmas decor, miscellaneous

As has become our custom, we walked over to the nearby mall on Sunday to discover that the Christmas decorations had magically expanded. There was also a giant display of what appeared to be a pile of teddy bears all covered in fake snow. The effect was odd, however. The pile of teddy bears reminded me somehow of the giant snow monster in the old "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" cartoon movie or was it the "Frosty the Snowman" cartoon?  Fake snow/ice covered objects are definitely popular this time of year. They do a lot of all white Santas (no red suit, everything is white), but also snow covered Santas in the traditional red suit. In addition, there are also a lot of unusual colors (unusual to me) in terms of decorations you can buy. It's almost as if they took the colors of Mardi Gras and made Christmas ornaments out of them. Pink is also very popular. As we move towards Christmas Day itself, we are seeing more and more artificial trees in the stores. They were even piping Christmas music at the mall.

We enjoyed something found in malls throughout the US on Saturday- Auntie Anne's pretzels. My first Auntie Anne's pretzel was in the Pittsburgh Airport sometime during the mid-1980s. 

 Have I mentioned that none of the sheet sets we brought with us fit the beds in the apartment?  We also did not bring any type of bedcover with us. We did bring one lightweight blanket. Since our arrival (we've been here almost 4 months) we have visited bedding departments of various shops and finally on Saturday we discovered a bed covering set that was acceptable to both of us. The set includes a fitted sheet, a lightweight comforter and duvet cover (different patterns on the 2 sides), 2 pillow cases and 2 bolster cases. We were first in the kitchen accessories department where we picked up a couple of items. A shop clerk brought us a shopping bag so we didn't have to carry the 2 small items. When we found the bedding set, even though it had handles on it, the clerk brought us a small wheeled  trolley cart. The next task is to purchase a flat sheet to coordinate with this set. Most folks here do not use a flat top sheet at all. They use only a fitted sheet and a comforter with a duvet cover that can be laundered. We personally like the top sheet because we don't turn the air conditioner down very much at night and it gets fairly warm overnight.

As we were leaving the mall on Saturday we spotted a santa-capped individual at the curb helping people in and out of their cars.