and a partridge in a pear treeeeeee.....

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me - one digital camera (yay!)

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me - 2 new sets of dishes (to replace the ones Rascal broke)

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me - 3 fashionable Barbies (as if Tweenie needed more!)

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me - 4 musical toys (grrrrrrr)

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me - fiiiiiiive half-eaten candy caaaaaaaanes stuck to the floooooor with hairs and schneeblies on theeeeeeeeem (you have to sing that part)
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Ok, so the song could go on and on, but the bottom line is that everyone got what they wanted and asked for, the carpet needs shampooing, the recycling pickup guys had a lot of work this morning, and we need a vacation from our Christmas vacation.

Also there's the teeny outstanding issue of a large amount of fancy chocolates consumed with several bottles of Zinfandel and Arbor Mist (Tantie helped a little)... so the treadmill will now come out of storage, and I should be my svelte self in no time.

Y'know, except there are a few more goodies still in the freezer that didn't get eaten, and we wouldn't want them to go to waste. After all, that's what hideous bulky Christmas sweaters are for, right?

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum...

I always knew Christmas trees and little children wouldn't mix. That's why when my stepdad offered us his hand-me-down artificial tree, I figured it was the cleanest and sanest choice despite personal misgivings about the whole idea of a fake tree.

This year Tweenie had a big hand in helping decorate it. We first laid out all the decorations on the coffee table and floor and decided on a method. I have many different pieces, lights, garlands and ribbons, non of which truly go together, so finding a cohesive scheme was a bit of a challenge.
This is what we came up with. Two strings of mini multicolored lights, several ropes of gold beads, a gold star on top, small gold balls for the top half and medium gold balls for the lower half. To finish it off, we chose all the ornaments that had a story or meaning (there are quite a few as it happens). We used the rest of the decorations elsewhere in the house and on the front porch. There was one sorry little 6 ft. string of green mini-lights that didn't otherwise find a spot, so we thought we could arrange them among the other lights on the tree.

We were quite proud of ourselves! The finished product was properly oohed and aahed by Husband and Rascal. Twit and Baby couldn't care less, of course.

Now it's 1 1/2 weeks later. Let's see where we're at.

At last count, we are down 4 medium gold balls because Rascal likes to climb on the kitchen counter and let them fall onto the tile floor. They make this jingly jangly sound when they crash, which must be just way too cool. The lowest-placed ornaments were used by Twit for batting practice, and some of them were carried off into her bed for future use but were rescued by an indignant Tweenie. Rascal tugged on the lights and bead garlands, and bent all the twig parts in weird directions.

The final result is this: all surviving ornaments are clustered on the top half of the tree, the lights are skewed off to one side, exposing the little line of green lights so they look like runway lighting, and some of the bead strands were bunched up in my hand and literally thrown at the top of the tree (I was in a hurry to rescue the next thing from Rascal's naughty little hand, ok?).

It is a pretty sorry sight...Now I wait until the latest possible moment to rearrange everything for the last days before Christmas so that I don't have to do this all over again! I'd post a picture of this beauty, but I don't own a digital camera and frankly, it's a little embarrassing.