It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Season's greetings! We've been in full Christmas mode for a good six weeks now...but since Christmas is only nine days away, it's REALLY Christmas! Here's the Christmas card we sent out this year:

And here is the exterior of the house! Let me just take a moment to extol one of Logan's many virtues: the proper hanging of Christmas lights. It was many years ago (12, to be exact) that I marveled at the meticulous approach Logan took to decorating his parents' house with Christmas lights. It wasn't a passing phase, apparently. He has received many comments on the precise spacing and straight lines of the lights. The highest praise of all? The question one neighbor asked: "So, who do you hire to do your lights?" (In his mind, I know Logan was yelling, "BOO YA!!!") Anyway, I love to drive up to this house.

Come on up to the porch! I do so love having a porch...

Step on inside and look to your left for a view of the dining room. I was able to procure this 9 1/2 foot slim pre-lit Christmas tree from KSL for less than half its asking price at Tai Pan Trading. I read an article in Better Homes and Gardens Christmas issue last year about decorating your tree like a professional. I decided right then and there that this was going to be the year for me and my tree! I'm a teensy bit obsessed with the color chartreuse at the moment, so that color was incorporated into my palette quite heavily. I'm very pleased with the results! A special thanks to those who gifted me with cash for my birthday. Most of it went toward this tree!

This is what she looks like by daylight, in case you were wondering...

A little centerpiece of bottlebrush trees and a deer. The inspiration for this design was also borrowed from BHG...

If you look closely, you can see the DARLING cake stand my sister Lisa gave me for my birthday! It's at the very tippy-top, with a polka-dot bow woven through it. I love it (one cannot have too many cake stands, as far as I'm concerned)!

Here is the west plant shelf in the kitchen...

...and the east plant shelf.

Looking down into the nook. This is the area of the kitchen where most people put their dining table. But since I like to host so much, I moved the dining room to a larger space and turned this spot into a little sitting area. I find that it suits our needs quite well! The buffet under the bay window is usually in the dining room where the tree currently resides. The rest of the year, there is a high-back bench under the bay window. Very cozy!

The family room:

Can I just take a moment for a quick diatribe about nativity sets? I have a beef with them (not the subject matter, mind you). In most nativity sets, you see the baby Jesus in a manger with Mary sitting a little way off, hands clasped in front of her. Joseph stands even farther away...and he never looks like he really cares about Mary or the baby. He just stands there. Now, I ask you: How many photos have you seen of a brand new family where the mother is not holding her baby, and the husband is not beaming with joy and pride?! I'll tell you what; when I had my babies, all I wanted to do was snuggle them all the time. And I didn't want Logan standing 10 feet away, staring at me like I belonged in a zoo or something. Sheesh.

Anyway, I found a nativity I really liked last year. Then, a few weeks ago, Lily came upstairs and told me that it "just fell over while I was sitting there." Uh huh. It was absolutely beyond repair, so I had to go get another one. The one I got is passable, I suppose...but the way it's painted kind of screams "Basilica" to me. Am I crazy? Anyway, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to paint it ivory and then antique it. Cast your vote!

The downstairs tree. I got a smaller tree this year for downstairs. The one we had before was too large, and it didn't leave room for a tree-topper. The kids were beyond excited to pick out a tree-topper this year!

What's this? A mantel for hanging stockings, you say? Why, yes it is! After many moons of searching, I finally found a large fireplace mantel/box and an electric insert the same week on KSL.com. If that's not kismet...well, I don't know what is. Logan did some customizing to make the insert fit properly in the opening, and I love the look of having a fireplace in the family room.

Presents! Okay, got the deal of the century on some Christmas nesting boxes I bought off KSL.com (are you noticing a theme here?). Now I'm wishing I would have gotten more of them, because they make gift wrapping such a cinch! I love this sparkly polka-dot ribbon...

Okay, this brings us to an important holiday event: Mock Christmas Eve, Lebanese-style! I realize that this is not the way most people celebrate Christmas Eve...but I ain't most people. My sister Lisa and her family moved to Pennsylvania a few months ago, but they were able to get a killer deal on some flights. We knew they wouldn't be here over Christmas, so we had an early Christmas Eve so we could have "Christmas" together. It was my turn to host this year...and the hostess chooses the menu! So we had my current favorite: Lebanese food. The table was set...

...and the food was ready! Here we have pita bread, spanakopita and several varieties of hummus.

There were fruits and veggies, ful mudammas, tabouleh...

...spinach fatayer, lamb sfiha...

..it was all delicious! Mom provided baklava for dessert. Turns out I wasn't that far off the mark; in researching recipes, I learned that many of the dishes we ate that night were fairly common at the time of Christ. Here are the kidlets, re-enacting the first Christmas. My newphew Beck was supposed to be the sheep, but he wasn't thrilled about keeping his ears on his head...

Next up was a fun morning of fudge-making. We were helping out a friend of my mom's who needed to make a mass quantity of fudge (I like the phrase, "mass quantity of fudge," BTW).

These two little helpers took the work very seriously.

Lily had the important job of quality control. No subpar fudge would do!

The finished product! Well, one pan of it, anyway. I'm told we made 50 pounds of fudge. Can that be right? I knew it was a lot, but geez...

After the fudge-making, we enjoyed our annual Grammy's Tea Party. Lot's of treats to be had!

This picture isn't that great, but I wanted to showcase Amanda's upturned pinky. :)

And just because it's about the cutest thing I've seen in a while...look who's sitting up!

Don't you just want to nibble those rolls? Speaking of nibbling, Amanda's 6th birthday party is fast approaching (only two days away!), and she has requested a Candyland-themed event. Here are the invitations:

Give me a few weeks and I'll have an update on Amanda's party and on Christmas. About Christmas...

I think I posted a while back about the less-than-perfect relationship I have with Santa Claus. You know, about how I don't really think he has anything to do with Christmas, and in the end only serves to confuse children and make liars out of their parents. I've often thought that I'd like to come up with some way to diminish (if not completely remove) the role of Santa Claus in our Christmas tradition...and a few months ago, I found a solution in an unexpected way. I've been reading the Little House on the Prairie series to my girls (got that idea from my cousin Song). One of the books details a Christmas when Laura (the main character) and her family aren't expecting Santa Claus to come because of their remote location and because of a terrible storm. That Christmas, they spent time together with one of their neighbors, Mr. Edwards, who tells the girls he met Santa Claus in the city. He says that Santa Claus asked him to bring gifts for the girls since he was worried his sleigh couldn't make it through the storm. And so they still had gifts and Christmas dinner and all the usual traditions...but Santa Clause never came. The final words of that chapter are, "That was a happy Christmas." When we finished that chapter, Amanda's brow furrowed and she said, "Well, I don't think it was a happy Christmas. Santa Claus didn't even come!" So that sparked a discussion about why we celebrate Christmas, and do we really need Santa Claus, and why is Santa Claus important to you, and so on and so forth. By the end of the discussion, Amanda felt confident that Christmas could be just as good without Santa Claus as it was with him (as long as someone was bringing presents!). So after talking about it with Logan, we decided to ask the kids if it would be all right if mom and dad brought the presents this year, instead of Santa Claus. And they were okay with it! Now, I realize that this is not the same as telling them that there isn't a Santa Claus (I just can't see a way to do this without "ruining" things for their friends, classmates, etc.)...but I feel that it's a step in the right direction. We've never really talked up Santa Claus at our house, never written letters to him...because I'm just really uncomfortable reinforcing for my children what I know to be a false notion that I'll have to explain later. I thought I'd dodged the bullet on the whole letter to Santa bit...but no, the public school system thwarted me there. I understand that Santa Claus is part of the American tradition of Christmas, and I understand that not everyone views things the way I do. I don't expect the teachers at school to avoid talking about Santa. But it seems to me that a little more thought could have been taken before all the kids wrote a letter to Santa as a class activity. I only say this because Amanda's elementary is a Title I school. That means that a large percentage of families within the school boundaries fall below a certain socioeconomic level (i.e., more than half the students qualify for free or reduced meals, etc.). So to have these kids write letters to Santa at school, and then to have the teachers distribute a letter to each student from Santa several days later saying that he's working really hard in his shop to finish all the things they asked for...it just seems cruel to some of these parents! I would imagine that those who really can't afford to get their kids the things they want for Christmas have probably downplayed the whole "write a letter to Santa" thing in an effort to avoid disappointing their children. I guess I don't see how that disappointment can be avoided now, and that's a bitter pill to swallow for those parents. Anyway, I suppose that's enough of a rant. You're pretty much guaranteed at least one per post with me...