Have Yourself A Rainy Little Christmas

Well friends, tonight is the night. Christmas Eve. So much prep has gone into this moment.

Nope, still not the Christmas card...

This year, my family celebrated Christmas a day early because my brother, the valiant fire fighter, has to work on Christmas Day. (Someone has to be there when you drink too much wine, scorch your ham, and almost burn the house down.) That means I'm living in the aftermath, while everyone else is still waiting.

There's nothing like the mess you make on Christmas Day.

I figure since I have barely talked about The Most Wonderful Time of the Year this year, now is as good a time as any to show you around our festooned home.

Yes, we live here. This is what things look like after a night of five people eating and laughing into the wee hours. No time to clean up stockings or extra giftbags after that chill sesh.

One of my favorite Christmas decorations was the garland on top of the cabinets. Not too gimicky, but it fills the space and add some merriment to an otherwise normal area.

Looking at these messy, late-night, noisy photos, I'm reminded that life isn't about stopping everything to get the perfect picture. It doesn't matter if your IG isn't always beautiful because if you're present in the moment, your memories will be more magical than any picture could capture.

I hope everyone is loving the last bit of the Christmas season.

Tree Pickin'

December is a busy time for any retail worker, so it's no wonder I've been playing blog-hooky lately. With any luck, I'll show some Christmas decor before the big day next week.

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I've haven't been procrastinating in every way; our tree has been up since just after Thanksgiving. Continuing our little tradition, we packed up Boone and his scarf and took a day trip to...wait for it...Boone!

Choose and Cut is like the No.1 way to get in the Christmas spirit and is practically a religion in western North Carolina. We planned on taking Christmas card pics here, but the sun was really harsh and we ended up with a lot of weird shadows.

This is the best we got, and we're both pretty squinty, Pat looks bald, I look lopsided/chubby, and Boone looks startled. Look out next week for the (awesome) picture that made the Christmas-Card-cut.

And of course, we picked a tree farm with a Dood, since I'm trying to win the "what breed should the next puppy be?" debate. He latched on to Mr. Boone right away.

We also picked out what looked like the smallest tree on the lot. Then we got home where we discovered it is friggin' enormous. We even had to rearrange our living room furniture.

Any-(Cindy-Lou)-hoo, that's a recap of our weekend, three weekends too late. Hope everyone else is getting in the Christmas spirit. Save me a cookie.

Foyer Art Project

Ahhh. I bet you thought I forgot. That's assuming you even remember.

I mentioned over a year ago that I was putting together a small gallery of our house's construction. Since it was basically all I thought about in 2013, it only seems right to commemorate not just the end result, but the process. The three shot set features a pic from just after our foundation was poured, a pic from when it was framed, and a look at the final thing.

It hangs in our foyer (hence the name...) kinda behind our coat rack. Construction pics are not Glamor Shots by any measure, so I wanted it somewhere that I would regularly see, but wouldn't be a huge focal point.

To me, it's such a cute little memento of a really big part of our lives. It's something that feels distinctly ours, not bought at HomeGoods or made off someone else's brilliant Pinterest idea.

Plus, I always love a good Boone photobomb.