Minimizing Christmas...

Or not really Christmas... But the excess in gifts, toys, materialism.
I'm trying to explain it to Olivia now. We've always gotten her everything on her list. And I don't want to do that anymore. I want to get/make the girls each a few special things. I don't want to rush out to the store, list in hand, and buy everything on a piece of paper.
I explained to Olivia that it's better this way.
We'll celebrate the season wholeheartedly, listening to music. Baking cookies. Cutting down and decorating a tree. Crafts and projects. Stories by the fire.
Olivia asked... "Why? Are we poor now?" I told her: "No, I just want Christmas to be about Christmas and not just about getting 'stuff'."
I'm not sure she understands but I want to make this Christmas the best Christmas ever without the excess. And then maybe she'll understand.

I *can* and *do* suck at something!

Painting furniture. I suck at it. I just figured... well... this may sound bad, but I have done well in everything I've tried to do so far.
My first cake ever:

Carving pumpkins...


photography:

sewing:

I mean.... I try something and I just do pretty well. But I painted a bookshelf and chair for Miss Sofia and it doesn't look so hot. I don't have a picture yet, but let me tell ya. This baby needs some touch ups. It *is* cute. And from far away it looks pretty darn good. But I really thought I'd have done a better job.
So much for my dreams of buying cool old furniture pieces and refinishing them.

I think it's mostly because I didn't sand. I painted stripes and the blue tape pulled paint AND primer off in chunks. That isn't supposed to happen, right? Damn. I knew I should have rough sanded. But I have so many things on my to do list that I thought that i'd just skip that step and it'd be just fine.
Hmph!

OKAY.

I'm nearly done unpacking... but I guess I've hit a slump. I can't make myself finish. So there are random boxes here and there, just waiting.
The dog is insane. He zooms around the house bouncing off the walls. But at the dog park he's a chicken shit. He killed his hedgehog today. First he pulled out the squeaker. Then he spread the stuffing all over the room. He was 17 lbs when we got him a month ago. He is now 37 lbs. I need to measure his height but haven't found either of my measuring tapes.
The girls are all wonderful. Beautiful and sweet. Miss O has started 5th grade and is loving her class. She wants to join band and play the trumpet. Funny... my girl and her trumpet. Sofia is talking non-stop and I can understand pretty much everything. Except when she's speaking spanish. She definitely knows more spanish than I do. Carmen is crawling around, says ooow, and uh-oh. she pulls up to standing now and wants to suck on the dog.
That's it in a nutshell. Life is busy. Very busy. But good.