With midterms and lit reviews due in mid-October, I didn’t get a chance to decorate for my favorite holiday – Halloween.
As I saw others taking down pumpkins and spiderwebs, I was thankful that at least I didn’t have to UNdecorate. I thought I was one step ahead on the holidays.
That is, until driving down my street last week. I noticed at least a dozen houses with Christmas trees up already.
Damnit.
Can I pretend to be Jewish this year and avoid the tree thing altogether? I’m not a Scrooge… I’m just realistic that this is REALLY something I don’t have time for.
I’d rather spend my time getting the kids into their new bedrooms and preparing for Christmas presents.
This year is the first year I can buy Christmas gifts for my kids and really cater them to each girl. Which might be why I’m so damned excited I could BURST.
The funny part is, the gifts are so simple, and for the most part, cheap.
Alison was the easiest. The girl raids my mailbox for return envelopes, and she uses them to “send letters” to Grandma and Auntie Stephie.
I made her some stationery using a pink poodle and a scroll text of Alison Claire beneath.
She’s going to get a huge stack of envelopes, stamps, and pre-addressed labels with all sorts of addresses on them so she can put together and mail letters to whomever she’d like, without Mommy’s help.
Yay for independence!
A couple of fluffy feather pens, two boxes of pug puppy glitter cards, and some art supplies later, and her “theme” came together nicely.
Stephie even suggested that we buy personalized stamps with her face on them. Except one sheet is 30-some dollars. Ouch. That girl need a ROLL of stamps.
Kristin is our book worm, so we’re probably going to buy her a comfy reading chair for her room since – after this next week – she’ll have a room to herself. Then we’ll add some reading materials and maybe a journal, and some pretty pretty stuff. I’m looking at making a neat bookshelf for one wall of her room… maybe a bunch of rails that can display books in the open. We’ll see. (I still have about 1000 other projects to do first.)
She loves hats, so I was thinking she could use a hat rack for her room, too.
Emma was more difficult.
She doesn’t really have a niche, except for being strange.
I told her “You’re an odd one” the other day, to which she replied:
“No, I’m an EVEN!”
Case in point.
I asked Mike what he thought her hobbies were, and he said tackling a Daddy.
Hmmm…
But then I remembered how ridiculously stoooopid she gets when we have an impromptu dance party (usually when my phone rings).
We’ve decided to give Emma Mike’s MP3 player since his dad gave him a new one this May. We bought her a cartoonish skeleton speaker-guy, and I can see lots of butt wiggling and giggling in that girl’s future.
Music.
Mail.
Books.
Add to that a bunch of clothes and random crap that we’ll probably pick up at the last minute, like always. Then there’s Mike, who can’t walk into a children’s clothing store without picking out a hat or two to feed Kristin’s habit. He picked out a gray jeweled beret and a page boy cap with glittery threads throughout, so we tried to find comfy t-shirts to match.
It spiraled out of control from there. The headband, the necklace, the clips… that’s just ONE OUTFIT EACH.
While all this seems really lame for Christmas, this is the type of stuff my kids get excited about. It’s because I keep them deprived all year.
My kids were smart enough to go to my parents to ask for the fun stuff.
Emma wants a chalk scooter.
Which I had to look up.
Because I’M lame.
But with the money I’ll be saving, I might finally be able to rid myself of the couch I refer to as The Urinator.
Unless Mike runs out and buys a gun first.
