Here I was upset that we didn't have anything on our tree and wouldn't be able to take a photo of anything Xmasy. I forgot about our front bushes. I've got my camera on the tripod to take this Out Of Focus (OOF) shot of the lights when I realized two things:

1) My Cullman Tripod Head is shot, it no longer locks. I tried to save a few $$ and paid the price.

2) The EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro has some flare. Though you can't see it, in the center of the photo is an odd flare. It was much more pronounced in some of the other shots that I canned.

Either way, I got the shot I was looking for and realized that I can break out my Lensbabies 3G with a custom Aperture for a shot perhaps tomorrow.