virtual christmas card.

just like last year, i got our christmas cards this year from Shutterfly.

unlike last year, we did not really have a reason this year to have anyone take nice, professional quality pictures of us to put on our cards. in fact, since i was most often the one behind the camera, pictures of both of us together were few and far between this year. and as far as finding one good enough to use, it didnt really help that the ones we did have mostly looked like this:

  

  

attractive, no? don't get me wrong - i love each and every one of those pictures. because this is pretty much exactly what our year looked like. and that last one was actually a pretty serious contender to be the one defining picture of our year.

but instead of trying to find just one picture that made us look mostly decent to send out to our friends and family, we ended up with a few pictures that made us look just kind of ok, especially since having more of them meant that they could each be smaller!

also, instead of writing out a christmas letter this year, we found a card that let us just share the highlights of our year in list form. and more words on the card meant even smaller pictures. winning!

so just in case you didn't make the short list* of people who got one of these in the mail, allow me to introduce you to this year's Christmas card! 

*and that does not mean i dont love you but more likely that i might have lost your address and was too lazy to hunt for it so if you want to get on the mailing list for next year you should probably send that to me so i have plenty of time to either add it to my address list or more likely to forget to do that and wind up losing it again at some point over the next 12 months. wow. its kind of amazing that i ever accomplish anything.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

curtains are overrated.

internets, i have a confession to make. we still do not have curtains on 60% of the windows in our house. all the curtain rods are bought and hung on the walls, and we have the fabric that will one day turn into the most fabulous curtains you have ever seen for the fireplace room, front room, and dining room. i promise, there will be curtains and there will be pictures, just as soon as my busy schedule manages to line up with the even busier schedule of my most wonderful friend who has a sewing machine and who also offered to help me make my curtains. and that's obviously not going to happen until after the holidays.

but until then, i am refusing to let our curtain-less windows get me down. in fact, i am using them to my advantage as i decorate for Christmas. because could there be an easier way to hang 48 Christmas balls in your front window than with fishing line and a curtain-less curtain rod? i highly doubt it. 

i found these gems being sold all together in one big box at Target. they're the perfect mix of colors, shiny, and sparkle, which means they immediately and a little bit impulsively jumped straight into my cart. and they're mostly unbreakable too, which is handy for a klutz like me who managed to send several of them flying across the room after accidentally 'trimming' the wrong invisible string. they actually have a pretty nice bounce to them, as long as you don't drop them on their heads.

i'm in love. i mean really. who needs curtains when you could have this little bit of lovely in your life instead?

* i got this idea from pinterest, the great internet timesuck where productivity goes to die.

meet Harold.

we had a beautiful weekend here. it was sunny, it was warm enough to be outside during the day in just a sweatshirt or sweater, but there was enough of a chill in the air to make you remember that it is December and Christmas is coming. it seemend like a perfect day to get our Christmas tree!

last year, we used the artificial tree that i had in my apartment. it was tall and skinny and came complete with fake snow. i thought it was adorable, and it had plenty of room underneath it for presents, but my sisters made fun of it when they came to visit.

this year i convinced the hubs that a real live tree was the way to go. we weren't quite ambitious enough to go cut down our own at a tree farm, but we felt pretty qualified to pick one off a lot.

we looked around for a short time to find a tree that was the right height and nicely shaped. it was a relatively painless decision, and the nice guys who were working there whisked the tree away to wrap it up before i could even take a picture of it where it stood.

the hubs loaded the tree onto Sophie's roof, being careful to put down some old towels to protect her from scratches.

then i helped him tie it down nice and securely for the ride home.

on our way home, we took turns checking to make sure the tree was still attached to the roof. and then this conversation happened:

A: i think he looks like a Harold.
M: who?
A: the tree.
M: you cannot name our Christmas tree.
A: ...
M: it's too late, isnt it?

so our tree this year is named Harold. (it's safe because neither of us were planning on naming one of our kids Harold someday) we're not sure yet if ALL subsequent trees will also be named Harold. i guess we'll have to wait and see what next year's tree looks like.

as for this year's Harold, i have taken a lot of pictures of him. you could probably make a flip-book and see the progress. or you could just scroll down through the rest of this post and see the progression too.

i got the tree stand all ready for him while the hubs took him off the roof of the car.

we put him in the stand and made him stand up straight.

i let him "settle" for as long as i could stand to wait, and then i added lights...

...the bow on top and a tree skirt around the bottom... (which is actually a twin-sized flat sheet from target!)

... and all our ornaments!

his decorations are admittedly a little bit sparse. i can't help thinking that we could use something like hand-made snowflakes to fill in the gaps, with a matching angel for the top if anyone out there would like to get a head start on an idea for us for next years Christmas... (hint,hint,wink,wink)

the final touch for now was putting some presents under the tree! i finally unpacked the gifts that were sent home with us from Thanksgiving and was happy to see that the presents had all survived the trip. a few needed some minor wrapping paper repairs, but only one needed a major duct-tape wrapping overhaul.

doesn't he look great? dont you just want to come over and visit him? and of course us too... but i might totally understand if you just stopped by to say hi to Harold. he is really quite charming.

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our house... how about yours?

never stop improving.

yeah, i stole that from Lowes. this post has nothing at all to do with Lowes.

but it does have something to do with home improvement.

wanna see what we've been up to? what we've been so busy doing that we havent quite yet fully gotten into Christmas and why we're on the brink of being hopelessly behind on Christmas and considering just giving up and buying all of our presents this year at Home Depot?

painting. thats what.

the front room is done! the plastic is up off the floor! we no longer have to re-live the scenario of Trip-Shriek-Hubs Comes Running-Hubs Collapses With Laughter at the fact that the plastic tripped me AGAIN! we moved the monstrosity of a china cabinet back into the room to make room for a tree in the fireplace room! we discovered that the outlet by the monstrosity is controlled  by the switch by the door that we thought did nothing!

the hallway is done! i only changed my mind about the paint color once! there are still no doors on the closet or the basement stairs! i'm not really sure why i'm using so! many! exclamation! points!!!!1! but they make this all more exciting!

the dining room is mostly done. i still have a little bit of detail-painting to do in there under the chair rail, so it is still sporting its platic-covered floors and painters tape. i'll hopefully get to that soon.

but wait, thats not all! we also moved straight from painting and started hanging curtain rods! because you know, eventually we're really going to have curtains to hang, and they are going to be FANTASTIC!

we had one minor snafu with one of the special heavy-duty wall anchors pulling right out of the wall that it was supposed to be anchored into, but other than that nice fresh hole in the wall, the process has gone fairly smoothly. this is the first one we hung. whaddaya think? beautiful, right?

we didn't quite make our goal of having the entire upstairs finished this year, (and by finished i mostly mean painted) we still have to do the kitchen and the bathroom, but we came pretty close and i'm pretty happy with where we are. and we still have a few weeks to try and tackle the few things still on our list of
Things-We-Want-To-Finish-Before-The-End-Of-This-Year:

- hang the rest of the curtain rods.
       (one came out of the box corroded :( so we have to return it )
- replace the outlets and light switches.
- finish the not-a-credenza. (i'm so close!)
- paint the stripes in the dining room.
- paint and re-hang the basement and two closet doors.

think we can make it and still survive Christmas? fingers crossed...

i dont think my coworkers know what to do with me.

in my office, there are these hanging plants that i suppose are strategically placed to make the cubicle world feel less cubicle-ish. they are green and leafy and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

that is, until i did this to the one that hangs by my desk:

this is by far the best use of $4 and the second half of my lunch hour that i have ever found. so freakin festive! and yes, pink sparkles are in fact the epitome of Christmas festive-ness and are keeping me from slipping into a Christmas funk fueled by a lack of decorations at home coupled with the current weather, which is 60 degrees and rainy.

chance of snow overnight though... fingers crossed.

woohoo!

sometimes, the Google people know just what to say to make me smile

.

battle of the christmas carols.

five days into december and i already feel close to hopelessly behind on Christmas. i have zero presents bought, zero decorations in my house, we're still not sure if we're going real or fake for our tree this year, and our free time between now and Christmas is rapidly decreasing. 

but nevertheless, i have been doing as much as i can to get into the Christmas spirit this past week, which basically means that i have been listening to Christmas music exclusively since we got back from WY. its really the least i can do, but at least its helping me cope with the fact that the holiday might actually be coming up a lot quicker than i would like to believe.

but what i never really realized about Christmas music is that its not all entirely universal. yes, there are the classic carols and rudolph the red nosed reindeer who are no doubt listened to and loved by the masses, but there are some Christmas songs that only exist in certain areas of the country, because they wouldn't really make a lot of sense to anyone outside those areas. what i'm trying to say is that there are such things as colloquial Christmas-isms.

i don't know if they exist everywhere, but i do know that both the Steel City (where i grew up) and Charm City (where i currently live)  both have their own. here, let me show you them. 

Pittsburgh: 

Baltimore: 

whaddaya think? they're both catchy, get-stuck-in-your-head-for-days kinds of songs. they both pretty well capture the essence of their respective cities - both the Yinzers and the crab-obsessed people of the bay. one will leave you craving pierogies and a sandwich topped with fries and slaw, with a peppy tune and a cheery "i'm tellin' yinz hows come" popping into your head throughout the day. the other will have you anxioiusly awaiting the return of crab season and make you belt out randomly and borderline-obnoxiously "NO NOT SCROD!"

if you're exclusively from da Burgh or B-more, maybe you're perfectly ok with that because you never have to listen to both in the same season. but if you're a transplant like me, then you might find yourself humming a tuneless mash-up along the lines of  "jeet jet? then dontcha kno yinz come on dahntahn picksburgh hon and get some steamed crabs and a beer n'at for Christmas!"

and i'm just not sure how i feel about that.

so, good people of the internets: if you had to choose, who do you say has the better Christmas song?

ps. i still have no idea what scrod is, but i dont think i would want it for Christmas either.