Christmas Threw Up, v.2008

Whew!!! The inside of the house is officially entirely decked out. The problem is, as usual it is now almost impossible to keep the house neat AT ALL. On normal weekends, the house gets messed up, but during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, hoo boy, get out your shovels because you're gonna have to make a path! Between decorations, shopping bags, craft stuff, things that the kids bring home from various places, and MAIL (holy God, the catalogues!!! Do I *really* need the Hearthsong catelogue to come every. freakin'. day?! I think not.), the house goes completely to pot over the holiday weekends. This is partly because I refuse to kill myself trying to keep up, and partly because I refuse to clean on weekends (unless someone is coming over, and that someone is someone who doesn't usually come over so I feel like I have to clean up for them, which hardly ever happens). At this time of year, I'm so busy with school and church activities that I barely have time to put on clean clothes, never mind clear off space so we can eat at the table like normal people. No, no - we will be eating in the living room for the next several weeks, I believe.

Anyway, since so many other people have posted such lovely photos of what Christmas means at their homes, I figured I'd post what Christmas is at our house. I tried to take photos that didn't show the mess. You're welcome.

So, this is the tree, unlit and lit:

See, I told you that you can see these LED lights from space, particularly the blue ones! There are all colors on there, but the blue ones are pretty bright.

This is my favorite nativity scene:
I really like cute nativities, and I have sort of a collection of them now. This is the best one, though. I love the expressions on the faces, and the little animals.

This is one of my best Christmas purchases EVER. It's an LED flickering candle that turns itself on and off!!! It goes on every night at 6, turns off six hours later, and then turns itself back on the next night!!!!! How fabulous is THAT?!?! I love how houses look with candles in the windows, but the cheaper ones ran out of batteries all the time, were tippy, and I had to remember to turn them all on and off every morning and night. Right. These will last all season, aren't tippy at all, and come with a big suction cup to help them stay put! The only problem is, the suction cup isn't long enough to reach over the sill to the glass, so the ones that are directly on the sill can't use the cup. They're currently $6 at Michael's. I know, steep, but I figure I was replacing the crappy ones all the time due to breaks and paying for all those batteries, so it works out the same in the end.

And this is my favorite decoration:

Isn't it beautiful? It's glass, and I've actually managed to keep it in one piece for about eight years now. It's about the size of my hand, and weighs about what a paperweight would. I just loce the way the snow blends into the branches, and how the ribbon on the packages looks like the most perfect frosting. Just perfect.

And now for something totally different. I present to you, Captain Underpants Vader:

If there's a category of merit badge that specifies Being Prepared for a Jedi Situation, he would win, hands-down.