Wednesday, December 28, 2011

confession: surviving the holidays



When I was a little girl, Christmas was magic.  I loved the fact that I was the only little girl who had a tree decorated by Santa.  Every year the jolly old elf would visit our house twice.  We'd buy a tree, I'd go to bed, and POOF! the next morning there was this gorgeous tree in the living room that Santa had decorated.  Years later I realized that it was Mom's way of having total control over the tree and how it looked.

Thank goodness I didn't take after my Mom with her total-control-over-all-things-Christmas type of personality.  Well, at first I did.  I used to get wound up tighter than a spring when the kids were little, then one year I realized that I was getting no fun out of the holiday, and working myself into a snit every year.  By the time Christmas day got here, I was as useless as a pile of unbaked cookie dough in a cold oven.

Now I tend to go with the flow.  I've learned some valuable lessons along the way that I would like to share. I didn't share these before Christmas because I realized that only with post-Christmas burnout would anyone even begin to understand the points I was trying to make.  I figure by now most of you are feeling shell-shocked by it all, and are in an overdosed carbohydrate coma to boot.  (I awakened from my own coma today.)  So I humbly offer my ideas for surviving.  Read these and tuck them away, because next year will be here before you know it.

1. When you decorate, use everyday items to add seasonal color around your house.  Target bags make great bathroom garbage can liners, and the red circles on them look like little red wreaths.

2. If you time buying your Christmas poinsettia just right, the last leaf won't drop until the day after Christmas.  It adds a lot of beautiful color and when Christmas is gone, so is it.

3. Remember the tree principle: the smaller the tree, the fewer ornaments it takes to decorate it.  And if you shove it in a corner, you can cut that amount in half and decorate the front only.

4. Kids will eat anything.  So if you are watching your waistline at Christmas, let the kids bake up those tubs of cookie dough you bought, and make sure to bake them too long.  Kids don't care, and you will be less tempted to eat cookies that taste like chocolate charcoal.  (Until after Christmas, when you go into a carbohydrate crash and burned cookies start looking good.  Make sure you send them home with the grandkids.)

5. Recycle, recycle.  I can't emphasize this enough.  That old green tablecloth that is stained and ugly will take on new life when you turn it into a tree skirt and wrap it around the base of your $35 four foot Christmas tree.

6. All the Christmas coffee mugs you were given over the years make a great centerpiece for the table.  Just stack them in the middle of the table, and throw some tinsel over them for a festive centerpiece that everyone will envy.  If you run out of last minute Christmas gifts, you can always take one or two and regift them, and throw a couple ornaments (left from your tree) into the centerpiece to fill the holes.

7. If you run out of eggnog before Christmas, add vanilla, nutmeg and sugar to buttermilk and tell your guests it is diet eggnog and that is why it is a bit funky tasting.

8. You can hide a lot of dust bunnies and fruitcake crumbs under a Christmas tree skirt.

9. Don't shop until three days before Christmas.  Make your shopping list, then have a couple Margaritas before you go.  You will be amazed at the bargains you find, and it won't even bother you that your 80 year old mom is getting a G-string from Victoria's Secret.  Or that you just bought a $300 remote control car for your toddler grandson.

10.  Tell all your family and friends that if they are buying you a gift, wine is at the top of your wishlist.  Voila!, your wine rack is restocked in one fell swoop.  And you will have something to offer those guests who wretch when they try your buttermilk eggnog.

The last and best suggestion to surviving the holidays is to relax, this too shall pass.  Just like constipation, it is a temporary condition.

May your holiday (what's left of it) be a notch better than your worst nightmare. :D


~cath xo
Twitter @jonesbabie

23 comments:

  1. Thanks for the advice - I've been doing it all wrong! Who knew?! Maybe next year. :D

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  2. And it did pass - like wind. :)) Happy new year, Cathy!

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  3. So funny that your mom led you to believe Santa came twice, once to decorate the tree and a second time to deliver presents and fill stockings! As a mother of small children, I can see why she did this. I let the kids decorate the tree and it fell over - bottom heavy. Next year I might just take your mother's lead. ;-)

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  4. @ Rachel, the problem with Momma doing the tree decorating was that when we were in high school, yes high school, she finally left us to decorate it, 6 hours later when she came home, Cathy and I still had yet to get the lights on. We had no idea how to do them and had put them on from top to bottom and bottom to top and still came up short with the lights! I still am a bit challenged with the lights, lol. @Cath, love your decorating ideas, going to use a couple next year! xoxo

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  5. Thanks for such a sound advice. I am indeed suffering from post-Xmas burnout...

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  6. @Thom BrownWell I wouldn't say you've been doing it wrong, just maybe doing it the hard way. I choose simple and easy over hard and fretful. : D

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  7. @Rachel Howells I let my kids help, then rearranged the worst of it when they went to bed. I never lost a tree. :D

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  8. Your mother is a brilliant woman! LOL! Thanks for the words of wisdom! I particularly loved the Target bag suggestion! :-))

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  9. Really clever and funny. You are a genius.

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  10. @Vix And that is why I buy prelit, cheap ass Christmas trees dear sister. Glad you like my ideas. I should have added the one about using dry erase markers to draw Christmas designs on your mirrors and windows. Works like a dream. :D xo

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  11. @MuMuGB I hear ya Muriel, I had post Christmas burnout before Christmas! :D cheer up, we have 11 1/2 months til this crap starts over again. :D

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  12. @Joy Page Manuel Glad you liked my suggestions Joy. My kids thought I was crazy when I'd holler "don't throw that Target bag away!" :D

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  13. @Lynne Watts Thanks Lynne, but I'm not a genius. Just a woman with a wild imagination and a penchant for doing things "differently". :D

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  14. I love this post, Cath.
    Of course, it's a vicarious thrill (or abject horror, as the case may be). I do have a New Year's wish for you...
    A doctor on TV said to have inner peace we should finish things we started & we all could use more calm in our lives. I looked around my house to find things I'd started & hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bottle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiuminun scriptins, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum.

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  15. Oh, I love your mum's total controlness! Fancy decorating the tree by yourself every Christmas! Super! Also have taken note of the margarita inspired shopping. I'll be all over that next Christmas. . .unless I leave the country as I keep threatening! (If only I could figure out where to go.)
    xx Stella

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  16. @Cerebrations.biz Laughing here Roy. I definitely need somme inner piss. :D

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  17. @Stella You and me both Stella...next year I will definitely be wasting away in Margaritaville when it's time to shop. :D

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  18. Great and sound advice, I love the target bag touch; I have wreaths in my waste baskets year round....

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  19. At the salon one year Melody told me I was putting the lights on wrong by starting from the top, that the plug wouldn't end up in the right place. I told her I do them that way all the time, she said "okay we'll see, but the right way is from the bottom". I took a survey with the salon clients and top to bottom won, she was surprised by that outcome and that my lights came out just fine too! :-D just a little Christmas trivia for you lol

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  20. @Jan Target bags let me have a little Christmas feeling all year long, every time I throw something in the garbage. :D

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  21. @Anonymous Christmas trivia sis? Sounds like a little Christmas OCD to me. I just plug in my prelit tree and spend the time watching the lights I would spend putting them on the tree. :D

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