Poof! It's Christmas.

Add tinsle, it's Christmas. OK, add a Christmas tree, an endless sea of ornaments, Rudolph figurines, (can't have Christmas without Rudolph!!) blinky lights, various holiday tchotchkes, Christmas music and gifts for under the tree that my Mother sent in July, and THEN it's Christmas. I'm totally into it, I love the holidays. And here's our living room in all of it's holiday glory, for the continuation of the New Home Photo Tour.

I LOVE our living room. One thing I really didn't want to give up from our old home was the fact that our living and dining room were one big open room--luckily we did indeed get the same thing here. The openess is even more expansive since we have this vaulted ceiling, complete with wooden beams. Love it! Coreman especially has a warm spot for it--I think between that and the woodsy lot, he really feels like he's back home in his childhood house.

We have a very interesting floor plan--it's sort of like a split entry that only goes up, and not down when you enter the door. I guess that is a positive concept...things can only go up around here! I love being high up above the street in our living room, the view out of our many windows is so lovely. The previous owners had the wood floors redone as well, and they are gleaming and beautiful. They are sort of a reddish color, very warm.

Check out our big fireplace and mantle! Now THAT'S a fireplace Santa can come down. In fact, I hope he picks the right chimney--we have two! One that leads to the fireplace up here, and one for the downstairs fireplace. It's interesting, we had a fireplace in our old house but we rarely used it and eventually got an electric insert to go in it. We've already had about 5 fires in this house since we've moved in. I feel like I should be baking bread in this thing or something.

The dining room isn't especially grand, but it's a nice size and of course has the great view into our back yard. We're still trying to decide what kind of window coverings to do--of course privacy is a good thing, but we don't want to give up our view or make the room seem smaller as bulky treatments can so often do. Guess we'll live naked for a while and see how it feels...or not live naked, with the open windows. !

The green color out here is actually do-able. I was SO over green in our other house--when we first moved in practically everything was some shade of green. I'm not kidding. The kitchen was entirely green--counters, walls, floor...our bedroom was dark green, the carpet on the screened porch was green, and so was the floor and pipes in the basement. whew! This green is sort of a nice spring green though, and it works with the reddish wood. Me like. (whew, there's one big room we dont have to paint!)

I hope you all are enjoying the hustle-bustle of the holiday. I have to say, it doesn't bother me. I do have a bit of my Mother in me and although I don't do my Christmas shopping in July I do get things done early so when this time comes I'm not crazy. I rather enjoy the hunt and gather, the grocery shopping with all of the festive stuff out. It really helps that we have snow--we got a good amount on December 1st and today we are getting some more! Beautiful! Let it Snow!

Bah Humbug Already?!

Usually, I am the Christmas Queen. I LOVE Christmas. Even before it has a right to be there--like before Halloween--I get excited to see all of the stuff going up on the shelves in the stores. I love the decorations, the preparation, the food, the cookies, the music, the shopping...everything about it. It's the only thing that makes flu season worthwhile. But this year...I don't know. For some reason I was feeling cluttered even as I was pulling the Nutcrackers out of their storage container. What is up with that?? We have the tree up, it looks beautiful (despite the fact that it is sort of a Charlie Brown tree, being crooked and all...this is what you get when your husband insists on the cheapest tree...!)--and the house is decorated with all of the stuff I love...but yet I already find myself looking forward to the day I can put it all away. I wonder if that has anything to do with 40? When you're 40, you just want to simplify? You've dealt with so much clutter and crap in your life, at 40 you sort of feel like you are ready to cast it all aside and not let it box you in so much anymore? Of course that is a good thing, but it's not so good at Christmas time when your kids want to put every single ornament you have on an already over-stocked tree, or they think you're a fuddy-duddy because this year you'd really rather have just white lights instead of the chaotic feeling multi-colored ones. Kids definitely get used to what they see every year, and if you change something on them, it's not a good thing. Especially their Christmas. At least they don't mind if I ADD stuff, like the lovely menorah that Stephanie got me as a gift last year. A tree and a menorah! Ham and challah! Yeah. We cover all the bases here.

So anyway, I'll just deal with the clutter, I guess...what else can I do? But seeing the kids' faces light up at the magic is definitely worth it, I have to say. I suppose I'll just concentrate on trying to clean up my own inner clutter instead. Merry Christmas! Or whatever cram-packed holiday it is that you celebrate...