A Clean Christmas Tour

Posted On December 14, 2008

Well, it’s Sunday, and I’m happy to announce that my house is STILL CLEAN. Well, granted, my kids weren’t here for most of the weekend, but still…

Oh, yeah, I promised you that picture of my clean toilet (and I KNOW you have been DYING to see it), so here ’tis.

Notice the ABSENCE of pee all around the rim. It nearly brings a tear to my eye…especially because I wasn’t the one who had to do it!

So while the house is still clean, I’ll give you a little Christmas tour. Grab a cup of peppermint mocha, select some festive Christmas music from iTunes, and follow me!

First stop is the Christmas tree in the family room. As you’ll see, it has been meticulously decorated with only the finest ornaments. In fact, I’m pretty sure the tree in the window of Macy’s in New York City looks EXACTLY like this!

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

What BETTER celebrates the birth of our Savior than a big angry Yoda head? Huh?

And who doesn’t have a wrestler trying to take down an angel on their tree?

Truth is, even though you wouldn’t know it from my sarcastic and often callous posts, I’m actually a very sentimental gal, so I love hanging up these ornaments every year:

Husband’s grandfather painted this ornament when he was sick in the hospital. Since he died when my husband was young, I love that we have this!

There’s nothing sweeter on a tree than homemade kid ornaments! No matter what it is—snowman made out of Kleenex, craft made in Sunday School, heck, even a used Band-Aid with a pipe cleaner wrapped around it—ornaments made by children just seem to portray the magic of Christmas better than any Christopher Radko or Hallmark ornament ever could!

I have to share this ornament with you. On the last day of our Financial Peace University class, our facilitators had us each take home an ornament they had hanging on a little tree. They had taken all of the credit cards we had cut up in class and cut them up into tiny pieces and filled these clear ornaments with them! How cute is that? And such a great reminder for us to focus LESS on buying and MORE on the true meaning of Christmas! I can’t wait until the first Christmas where we can hang up and are completely DEBT-FREE!

Okay, on with the tour. Next stop—the “office,” which is the first room you see when you come in the front door. I put our smaller tree here and let the kids know this one was “Mommy’s tree.” In other words—hands off! As you can tell, I went with the “red and white” theme. I know—my originality just blows you away, doesn’t it?

Another one of my favorite ornaments is this sweet little pair of skates, made by Husband’s Great-Grandma. She also made what is perhaps my ALL-TIME FAVORITE Christmas decoration—my Christmas card holder.

Isn’t it beautiful? I can’t believe how sparkly it still is after all these years! First Husband’s great-grandma used it, then his grandma, and now us. I just get so excited about family heirlooms!

Finally, last stop on our tour is the family room again (Sorry—this wasn’t a real organized tour. I think we just totally backtracked. Oh well, what do you expect from cheap entertainment?) First, my Willow Tree Nativity Scene I’ve been collecting over the past five years or so. It’s so beautiful–it wouldn’t be Christmas without it! (And all of them still have their heads, unlike my other poor Willow Tree figurines, who, apparently like to “fight” with one another, according to Boy #3.) And then my little bench of snowmen and our family picture that I finally got around to framing after having the photos taken in JUNE.

Well, that’s about it for the tour. I’d show you the elaborate light display on the front of our house, but—oh, that’s right—we got nothin’! Every day that it’s been nice, I’ve said, “Man, I should put the lights outside today! Well, I’ll do it tomorrow for sure!” And then inevitably the next day is then 72 degrees below zero with 50 mph winds. I’m pretty sure we’re going to be the dark house in the neighborhood this year.

Thanks for stopping by! Grab a sugarplum on your way out! (No, I am not kidding. I actually made sugarplums this weekend! What is up with my domesticity?)