“Daddy?”
I looked up from my phone, which I’d been casually scrolling while Caroline played with her dollhouse on the living room floor. “Yes, baby?”
“Can we have a fancy Christmas, too?”
I frowned and put my phone down. “What do you mean?”
She put her dolls down. “You know. Like Mr. Colin has.”
When it hit me, I chuckled. “I don’t know. That’s a lot of work.”
“But they’re so pretty.” She jumped up from her spot on the floor and spun around before facing me again. “They sparkle. It’s like a castle.”
With a sigh, I tucked my phone into my pocket, knowing I was about to cave in. I was never good at telling her no, especially when it was something innocuous like Christmas decor. “Maybe we can. Did you know there’s a prize for the best-looking house in Port Grandlin?”
Her eyes went wide. “Thereis?”
I hummed and nodded. “Mmm-hmm. One thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” she breathed.
I scooped her in my arms and tickled her. As she giggled and squirmed, I continued. “Think of how many dolls you could buy with a thousand dollars.”
“A million!”
After another second of tickling, I set her next to me on the couch. “What should the decorations look like?”
She shrugged. “Sparkly.”
I gave her a solemn nod. “Of course. What else?”
“Could we have a winter princess? A big one, like as big as you. And she’s sprinkling magic dust everywhere and the dust is the lights!”
“That sounds like a tall order,” I said. “Maybe we keep it a little more tame for our first year, hmm?”
Her small shoulders slumped a bit. “Okay,” she said, sounding just a bit disappointed.
“Fine.” I sighed. “We’ll find a way to make it work. A winter princess with princess dust. But only if you help.” My mental wheels were turning already, trying to figure out how I’d manage to make a princess out of Christmas lights.
“Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air.
“Okay, then. Go get your shoes on. We have a lot of shopping to do.” While she got ready, I texted Robbie and asked him to meet us at the hardware store. To pull this off, I’d need backup.
An hour later, the three of us were at the home improvement store, browsing the aisles. I had a cart full of strands of lights in all different sizes and colors, along with hooks to hang them on the house.
“How are we going to make a life-sized princess?” I asked Robbie as we wandered through the store.
He closed his eyes briefly. “What if you used chicken wire?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “To make a princess?”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “For the body shape, anyway. Wooden dowel rods wrapped with layers of chicken wire, thenlights, then covered in some sort of fabric. It might not be the most elegant daytime solution, but I bet it would be pretty at night, which is the point, right?”
“Sure, whatever you say.” I followed him to the back of the store, where we grabbed a big roll of the flexible mesh wire, dowels, plywood, and assorted other equipment he thought we might need to build a princess.
“And for the dress, we’ll probably have to hit the fabric store,” he said, pulling a box of staples for the staple gun off the shelf and putting it into the cart.
I groaned softly and rubbed a hand over my face. This was getting much more complicated than I’d hoped and we’d just started. “What about a tree skirt?”
