How many hours of TV watching is still considered “acceptable” while one’s child is on winter break? Asking for a me.
Carla is feeling nearly back to normal. No fever since Sunday, and no more sore throat. Just a little sniffle and a bit of congestion.
We have SNOW this week, which is delightful!!!!! Probably because I am not obligated to drive in it. But I loooooove snow. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next couple of days, so it may not linger. But it’s so lovely while it’s lasting.
- Carla and I spent FIVE HOURS running errands on Monday. Five. Hours. It was… not pleasant. She is a real trooper, though, and maintained her good humor throughout. Me… not so much. Somehow, despite the marathon, I still need to go to the grocery store and I really really want to go to the garden center because I continue to have Porch Panic about the state of my front stoop. It is so dumb, but I feel like the dead mums (which I panic bought three days before Thanksgiving, by the way; they were beautiful and lush at that time) are emanating a Gross Dead Vibe and the entire neighborhood is whispering about me behind my back. (Going to a neighborhood Christmas party and having one of the neighbors teasingly ask why we don’t have any lights up didn’t help. THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION.) Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day???? I still would need to purchase twinkle lights though. I also have a strong urge to buy more poinsettias. I have two small ones, one of which is trying to die already, but I want MORE POINSETTIAS. Part of this is a case of Christmas Décor Envy, which I developed while attending the aforementioned holiday party: the hosts’ house was GORGEOUS and every inch of it was bright with Christmas magic. There is no point in comparing oneself to other people – and in reality, I have no idea WHERE they store all their Christmas paraphernalia, and I have only a creeping horror in my bones to hint at what kind of time and energy is required to dress the house in such a fashion – but still I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE A WINTER WONDERLAND. Poinsettias would go a long way toward helping me achieve that goal, right? RIGHT?
- The real problem, I think, is that I have no idea how to decorate this house for Christmas. The living room is weird, so our Christmas tree is weird. It was kind of a battle, to be honest, to figure out where to put it. And I was the one who gave in, which makes me feel crabby. It’s a very open space, with really only two full walls: the other walls are the kitchen (which is a partial wall separating two doors) and the stairway/entryway which isn’t even enclosed; there’s a balcony that overlooks the living room. The longest wall isn’t even a wall wall, it’s a wall of windows. And the other wall is taken up by cabinets and the fireplace. So there’s no REAL place to put the tree. We ended up putting it in the middle of the wall of windows, which I think at least makes sense symmetrically. (My husband and child wanted the tree off center, which just felt wrong in so many ways.) My big idea was to put the tree up against the stairway, but my husband hated that idea so vehemently I think he might have simply declined to celebrate Christmas if I’d pushed. (I still think it would look great.) Also, we are planning to get new furniture for the space, so NEXT YEAR it will be even weirder, but my husband said not to think about that now. (Does he know me?) And that’s just the living room! It’s definitely the most Christmassy of all the rooms. The other rooms have… nothing. Which feels so unfair! (The party host had FIVE CHRISTMAS TREES. That is more Christmas trees than I could ever handle, but maybe I could handle two????) I could fill the piano room with poinsettias! What I really want to do is to line the doorways with something festive (yes, I know I mentioned this already) – I originally thought pine garland. And I have seen so many Instagram videos of people putting shower tension rods in their doorways and decorating them with pine garland and ornaments etc. that I have started thinking that’s a viable idea. (Keep off the internet, kids.) My mother suggested ribbon, which sounds not only economical but also less dusty (and less of a pain to store) than pine garland. But I am not crafty like my mother is, so who knows. I did end up buying some bow-things at Joann Fabric (70% off!) (I also got a box of Hanukkah candles for next year, also 70% off, so perhaps we will have enough candles to light the menorah FULLY every single night of Hanukkah next year lol cringe.) and a spool of ribbon and I’m going to see what I can do. It may be very Preschooler Makes a First Ornament, but it will be Something.
- Where I have excelled, at least in volume, is baking. I have made not one but TWO batches of cranberry crumble bars, and they are still by far my favorite Christmas treat. They are just the perfect combination of buttery/tangy and crunchy/chewy. Carla wanted to bake, and her very specific baking request was snickerdoodles with buttercream frosting, so she made those. She really wanted colorful buttercream, and while she was rummaging around for food coloring she found the box of candy eyes we used last year and so she went wild with the eyes. Very Christmassy. I wanted to make molasses cookies, but they turned out a) completely smooth, not crackly like molasses cookies are supposed to be and b) very dry and crumbly on the inside. I tried to save them by adding an eggnog glaze, which I think does help, but… meh. From my online troubleshooting, it seems like my oven is the problem. (My understanding is that the crackly tops come from a combination of rolling the dough in sugar to dry it out, and having a nice hot oven.) I am pretty irritated with our ovens. Yes. We have TWO OVENS and neither of them seems to heat appropriately. SO FRUSTRATING. You should have seen how pale our Thanksgiving turkey was. It was cooked through, but it needed some time on the Jersey Shore with a bottle of baby oil.
- During our marathon errand day, Carla came across a selection of dog toys. She promptly burst into tears because she wanted to give them to all the dogs in our old neighborhood. Listen, I am a heartless bitch when it comes to I Really Need That tears. But I got a little misty, too, and I allowed her to buy them. She wanted to use her allowance, but then I had a discount situation that made them free. A Christmas miracle! She wrapped them and I texted our old neighbors and we spent an afternoon going from house to house, giving dog toys (and cookie plates) (although they were last-minute cookie plates, so they were on Hanukkah dishes because that’s all I had) and lots of pets. It made Carla’s day, although I think it also made her sad. It’s so hard to find a balance between honoring her grief by allowing her to visit these old neighbors, while also helping her to move on. I don’t think I’ve got it right. But it was lovely to see our old neighbors, who EACH had a little gift for Carla.
- Stocking stuffers have been procured. I feel as though I didn’t give you the full story, on Monday, when I alluded to shopping for stocking stuffers and how difficult that would be with Carla in tow. The thing is, I ordered stocking stuffers for Carla (and for my husband) long ago. Or at least long enough ago for them to have arrived already. However, my parents are spending Christmas Day with us, and I feel super awkward about them coming to our home and NOT having stockings to open. It is probably very silly, especially because they are minimalists at heart. But my desire to have Stocking Equity overruled my knowledge of their minimalism, so I got them stocking stuffers. (We have anonymous stockings that we set out for guests, so they will have stockings as well.) And also, I had NO IDEA what I wanted to get for stocking stuffers. The only thing that I really wished I’d learned about earlier was this flexible screwdriver bit. My dad would use the heck out of that bit! It’s so handy! But alas, I only learned about it on Monday when a YouTube ad interrupted my workout video. Next year, for sure. What I really needed to do was wander around a store and happen across the exact right stocking stuffers. And I got the chance during Carla’s music lesson and found a bunch of stocking stuffers that will hopefully be fun and/or personal-ish enough while also not making the recipient feel too guilty about throwing them out. So now there will be Stocking Equity and I am super relieved.
Well, that’s it for me before Christmas, I think! I still have the grocery store/garden center to visit, and I still have to wrap some presents. (And Santa has to wrap gifts AND stocking stuffers – WHY, Santa, WHY did you begin such an arduous tradition????) (Then again, maybe this is the last year Santa will visit our house, and I will henceforth be sobbing about NO SANTA GIFTS????? Parenting is so fun.)
Oh, by the way, I just have to include this here. Carla went to the orthodontist this week (yay, braces in our near future woo) and the orthodontist was very chatty about Santa. He said he sets TRAPS for Santa, to which Carla reacted with scorn. “Do you want to HURT Santa?” she asked, voice dripping with disapproval. No, the orthodontist just wants to SEE Santa, in person! “Why don’t you set up video cameras?” Carla suggested. Oh, but the orthodontist has tried that. And it didn’t work! Didn’t capture a thing. “That’s because Santa deletes the footage,” Carla said, and she might as well have added, “you idiot” because that’s what her tone conveyed.
SANTA DELETES THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. You heard it here, folks. Don’t try to mess with Santa, even via digital surveillance methods.
Those flexible bits- what a perfect present for a handy guy. I wish I had seen them earlier too -stocking stuffer for husband. They’ll have to wait for our anniversary!
Your living room looks magical- though I bet the tree against the would be awesome.
And a kid can watch as much TV as they want- esp if the weather is cold. A few minutes outside to remind them it’s winter, and then pop back in for cocoa and TV. I want to watch the lord of the rings trilogy, so my kids will be in front of a screen with me for some time. If she gets crabby from too much screen time, send her outside to look for squirrels/dogs/birds.
Enjoy the holiday!
Well I am planning to go offline for a couple of days but could not yet because I have so much to SAY.
First, the dog toys. I’m misty eyed in my coffee right now. That is just the sweetest thing. *sobs a little*
Second, deletes the video footage OMG CARLA! That kid is amazing. Oh, and braces. Girl, been there. It’s a ride. My kids have perfect teeth now, yay, but hoooooo boy, braces! I think the anticipation was, as with everything, the worst though. There are so many warnings about what you can’t eat (one of my sons was warned against bagels, what) and I found that they really can eat most things without a problem, even sticky things, so long as they brushed afterward. (no biting into apples, although M did that a few times, and no popcorn). J did break a couple of brackets but that was, I think you’ll remember, due to the debacle about his original orthodontist being an actual criminal, someone else attached the brackets, it didn’t go well. Also his braces were during the pandemic which was NOT GREAT BOB. What I’m saying is that even with all the drama, it was actually pretty fine. It’s the time GOING to the orthodontist and all the checkups that is a pain. The braces part is fine. The great thing is everyone has them these days!
I think your living room looks lovely and festive, and your snow is gorgeous (we have NONE), five hours is a lot of hours to run errands, and I’m glad Carla is feeling better! Merry Christmas, my friend, I will see you on the other side. xoxoxo
Your holiday treats look delicious and I really want to make those cranberry bars! I really love anything with a crumble on top, but I am also a fan of the idea of the tartness of the cranberries with the sweetness of the treat. We used to make a lot of cranberry bread and my mom’s specialty is cranberry sauce, but maybe we need a new cranberry item!
We did not have TV growing up so I was an avid reader and could spend the entire vacation reading in bed if I had my druthers. However, when I would go to visit my grandma, she only allowed 2 hours per day, which, coming from zero, seemed like a lot to me!
Good times! Our Christmas plans are up in the air thanks to a COVID case in the extended family. So I’m either baking for just the four of us or for a crowd of us and I don’t think we’ll know the answer until Christmas Eve. The more I think about it, I shouldn’t let the number sway me and just bake what I wanna bake. I am feeling the cranberry bars!
I almost feel bad for saying it but YES I LOOOOVE SNOW so much more now in the WFH era when driving in it is optional.
Merry Christmas!!!
What is lovely is your Christmas tree! And your beautiful snow. So jealous of your snow.
What isn’t so lovely is asking your new neighbors who have just moved in why they don’t have any lights up yet. A bit passive-aggressive if you ask me, but hopefully that was just party-stress and not someone’s best moment.
Have a wonderful first Christmas in your new home!
Neighbors actually said something about you not having lights?! WHAT?! What if you didn’t celebrate at all? What if you were disabled? What if you’re saving pennies on the utilities? What sort of person says anything? RUDE.
Having your house be a winter wonderland sounds like a good idea if someone else were to decorate it and take it all down at the end. LOL. Suzanne, you need your own ELF.
Two other quick points. One, a great spot for the Christmas tree was on my Top 15 things to look for when we were looking at houses. Maybe not as important as location or having a room we could use as an office, but certainly just as important as working heat and AC. Two, why are snickerdoodle cookies so popular? I do not understand. I have a lot of cookie opinions and I think my disdain for snickerdoodles is maybe controversial?
Have a great Christmas!!
LOL so much at the ortho convo. We have had 3 kids — so far!!— in braces. zOMG. So much angst about band color. SO many gross little rubberbands all over the place. SO much gross rubberband spit on mirrors. My biggest takeaway is schedule the appointments when you already are not having a fun, productive time— much less resentment than wasting a good chunk of creative time WAITING SO MUCH WAITING. Also their teeth are all yellow and gross after so have the ortho make molds for a bleach tray as long as they’re in there.
Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day?
NO YOU CANNOT. DO NOT EVEN THINK OF DOING THIS. GOOD HEAVENS. PLEASE JUNK THE MUMS AND PUT THEM AND EVERYONE OUT OF THEIR MISERY.
Shout out to Carla for being A) a Dog Santa. That’s got to be the best, coolest, kindest thing I’ve ever heard; and B) setting a new trend for Eyeball Christmas Cookies. I think it should become a new Tradition. I’d love to take the foil off a tray of cookies and have them look back at me.
I felt such a kinship with the idea to swirl twinkle lights on the past-their-prime mums! Also, my daughter would feel such a kinship with Carla if she were not at school right now as she puts candy eyes on ALL her cookies and used her allowance to buy a stocking for the puppy-on-her-Santa-list (which we are not getting) (as Santa both is technologically advanced enough to delete footage AND knows enough to not bring us another thing to keep alive this holiday) (nevertheless, she persisted sigh). I hope you and your family have the best Christmas!
Love the tree in spite of its tricky placement! My family didn’t do stockings and my mother-in-law went completely overboard on them, so I was more in between. (a few small things, mostly edible) Now that they’re adults, I don’t have to do anything! Lucky thing because I wasn’t good at it. You remind me that I need to get started on my baking. It doesn’t take as long as I imagine but I still procrastinate. Have a very merry Xmas!
I think your house looks gorgeous. It is far more festive than our house looks. So remind yourself that while you have envy for how that other home looks, others might have envy over how yours looks? But in my case, the envy doesn’t prompt me to do anything. It’s more a – ‘wow that house look gorgeous but I don’t care enough to make any changes to mine because I don’t want to buy more things that would require me to store them.’
Who is this person commenting on your lack of outdoor lights? I say throw out the mums and call it a day. I’d say maybe 1/3 of the houses on our block have lights up. They are beautiful and I appreciate them, but there’s no pressure to have lights up in our neighborhood. We don’t have any lights and while I would love to have some, I don’t want that badly enough to actually put up lights (because Phil is certainly NOT going to do that. He is not super into decorations, especially outdoor ones). Our window boxes are decorated and I am calling that good enough!
So I guess I am just basically team “good enough” these days. Or I’m team “I’m too tired to care”? And I didn’t bake a single thing! So you are really killing it over there. Give yourself more credit for all the magic, baking, and stocking equity you are pulling off!
So many thoughts, Suzanne.
Love the snow. Love Carla (always and forever, but SANTA DELETES FOOTAGE IS LITERALLY GENIUS).
Throw out the mums.
The tree looks amazing.
Christmas is a lot of pressure. If it makes you feel better, I buy zero poinsettias and think they’re kinda ugly?
Your living room looks great. Don’t do anything else to decorate. It’s gorgeous. It’s not a competition. You’ve already won the grand prize – a lovely husband, daughter, home – and maybe that person with the five trees is miserable?! Honestly, my sweet, lovely, friend – you are making Christmas magical for Carla which is what you most want I think. Success! Cross it off the list and move on to…I dunno. Eating every cranberry crumble bar in sight.
(Also, TWO ovens that don’t work properly? What the what?! Argh. I’m screaming into the void for you.)
Haaaa, don’t mess with Carla, dumbass. Your living room is perfect, and honestly one perfect room is more than enough. I would feel the same about stocking stuffers for everyone. I also have not wrapped anything yet which I kind of just realized today and am low-key having a tiny panic attack. Happily, my kids don’t have to be asleep or out of the house at this point, so I think I will actually do some of that RIGHT NOW. And yeah, the oven thing is NOT COOL, get someone on that pronto.
I stand in solidarity with you over Stocking (and gift) Equity. I remember the first time A was to spend Christmas with us; this bombshell was dropped maybe two weeks before Christmas. I went into a total panic over the fact we didn’t have a stocking for her.
Is that ortho an idiot? Of course, Carla knows more about Santa – of course his magic deletes the footage!
Believe me, you do not want or need more than one tree. Or more over the top decoration. I promise. Your living room is perfect and gorgeous.
Well, I think your living room looks amazing! Really, it’s beautiful. And those cranberry bars… I think I made them last year, and everyone loved them. My policy now is to keep the baking going until New Year’s (at least) so I’ll probably make them next week.
When we first moved into our house (20 years ago) one of the neighbors actually approached my husband and asked if we needed help getting our Christmas lights up. Er… our what? We had a one-year-old at the time and I wasn’t much into “extra” decorating, but we figured we better get with the program and get some lights! We’ve put them up ever since (without help) and I actually love it. We don’t do much, compared to some people, and lots of people in our neighborhood don’t put up lights- to each his own.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!!
I think 8-12 hours of TV a day sounds right! 😉
I am so glad Carla is feeling better! That’s so sweet that you visited the old neighborhood, and what she said to the ortho about Santa! LOL.
I love your idea to wrap the dead mums in lights! Ha! But for real, I am sorry the other houses are making you feel inadequate and that you are struggling with figuring out your new home. It’s gonna take time, but of course you want it to be perfect right now (I would too)! The tree spot looks lovely to me.
Five hours of errands with a kid is quite the marathon.
The snow is pretty. We just drove to WV today and there’s a little snow on the ground. Hoping it lasts two more days.
We have just one room, plus the yard/porch decorated at home and that’s enough for me.
I’m sorry, your neighbors said that?? Excuse me?? Ugh, some people… Carla is adorable and I’ll totally use that phrase about Santa footage…
I AM howling at Carla’s rebuttal to the stupid ass orthodontist. LOL!
Suzanne, your home looks SO festive. You are, of course, overthinking it all. I know, you know.
Since you gave in this year with the tree location, it makes sense that next year you get what you want.
I can tell you that your neighbors are not judging you on how many decorations you have. Or your nearly dead mums. For me, it takes so much energy to do ‘over the top decorations’ and I need to focus my energy elsewhere.
I hope your day was lovely!!
I hope that everything about the holiday smoothed out for you and yours, and that the bumps in the road become just that in hindsight. Have a wonderful start to 2024. Oh, and the next time your neighbor asks about doing something to the outside of your house? I suggest asking if they’d like to come take care of it. 😉
Oh, I love that you had snow for Christmas (it makes everything so much more festive).
I hope you didn’t fret much about your holiday decorations. I keep it simple around here (we don’t really get pressure from our neighbors because our neighbor to the right goes ALL OUT, so we don’t have to) and I guess it’s a good thing to live in a 1-bedroom duplex because there are less rooms to decorate. (All this to say, I hope you didn’t worry about it too much … and you’ll figure it out for next year at the new house).
The cranberry bars look amazing. And I laughed so hard about ‘Santa deletes the video footage’. Carla knows it! LOL
What a lovely snow picture. Snow is the best. Did you end up having a white Christmas?
Those cookies look really really good.
We also had to figure out a space for the Christmas tree in the new apartment. But as I wasn’t too much in the spirit we ended up getting a tiny tree in a pot that we put on the side board. Next year I think it is going to be a bigger tree.