This is Not My Tree

In fact, this is not even my house.



It belongs to four very sweet children and two of the best people I know. And one little dog. I hope they don't mind that I borrowed a picture to illustrate a point.

When I grow up, this is how I want my home to look at Christmas.

A tree with all the ornaments placed at the height of my children's reach. Tons of presents, all beautifully bundled in pretty paper.

End of the year wishes all wrapped up and waiting for the morning of the 25th.

***

In our house, the Looch chooses three different rolls of paper and uses one for each of us. That way, there are no tags on the gifts and we can't snoop to figure out what we're getting before the big day. We have to guess which paper belongs to us Christmas morning. Sometimes she makes it a treasure hunt. The clues are tailored to our inside jokes and unique traits. They are sweet and funny and silly and generally awesome.

***

It's traditions like these that I want to carry along to a family of my own one day. Because after 26 years of Christmas morning excitement, I can barely remember what was inside all those presents that were piled high around the tree.

All I can remember is how magical everything always looked. And how I could count on three different kinds of wrapping paper. And homemade ornaments placed around the tree with love.

So even though it's exciting to put the decorations all around the house and watch as the bottom of the tree disappears under mounds of wrapped gifts, it's the traditions that feel most like Christmas to me.

Two Pictures, One Fact.

Last night I went to a Christmas party. I wore a bow in my hair and painted my fingernails "raisinnuts" red.



A few weeks ago I went to the recording studio where a friend was tracking her new record. The sound engineer tried to convince me the electronics were called C3PO and R2D2.



Two very different nights, two very different experiences. Both left me with the same feeling: Never say no to something because you've never done it before. I say this with complete conviction.

It will be.... So. Fun.

Too Cold For Blogging

Lots has happened here in living alone land. But I'm too cold to blog about it.

Meat-A-Balls

Made meatballs and "gravy" last night. Delish.



That is all.

We're Awesome At Decorating

With Thanksgiving behind us, The Attitude and I decided to decorate the house for Christmas over the weekend.

While he headed outside to handle the outside lights, I rummaged through my storage bins and brought out the Christmas decorations. One of my favorite things is (and always has been) unwrapping all the tissue-wrapped ornaments and decorations and finding the perfect spot to place them around the house. I get this from the Looch. In fact, she echoed those exact thoughts at her house while Sisty and I were helping them decorate their house. I am my mother's daughter, what can I say?

I found our stockings and quickly realized they would have to stay in the storage bin for another year, considering I ripped down the mantle one day during Summer Renovations 2010.

But I couldn't leave the fireplace unadorned! And I hadn't done anything nerdy in a few days! So out came the sewing kit and I went to work making something in it's place.

The fabric store was having a huge sale on Saturday, so I snagged a bundle of quilting fabric for $5.99. I knew I wanted to make bunting (I'm kind of on a bunting-kick. Back off.) so it was as simple as measuring the length of the fireplace and then eye-balling the size of the flags to figure out how many I should cut.

My flags were 5 1/2" by 7", and I used 9 flags for 60" of ribbon.

Then I pinned them to the back of the ribbon and used invisible thread to hand stitch the flags. I wasn't precise about the spacing - mostly because I was watching TV and was tired of measuring things - but they ended up about 1.5" to 2" apart. Guess I'm learning to embrace imperfection.**

Ta-Da! Bunting!!

And here's the entire room...

**See what I mean about imperfection? I didn't even stop to straighten out the pictures or ask the Attitude to get out of the mirror.

And close-ups of my two favorite ornaments...

Next weekend is our girls' lunch to exchange ornaments (me, Sisty and the Looch). Can't wait to add a few more to my tree.

Oh, and the outside looks amazing! The Attitude more than made up for his toenail catastrophe by tucking away his Scrooge-y-ness and hanging the lights perfectly!

Your move, neighbors.