Keeping up with the Joneses

Merry Christmas Bloggers and Readers!!  I hope you and your family are having a wonderful holiday filled with everything you could ever want.  Happy Hanakaah and Happy Kawazaa and Happy Boxing Day as well!!  Of course, I’m off celebrating the holiday with my family, but I’m sure I will write about it later.  Until then, I’m taking (more) time off from the blogosphere to enjoy food, football and family.

Love,

Keeping Up with the Joneses

So in part…uh…well this is my fourth installment about Christmas and the holidays (I think) and in this one.  I’m going to give you the list I gave to Santa.  And yes, I really did this when I took my son to see Santa while I made an (ill-advised) impromptu trip to the mall.  While Santa was surprised that my grown behind actually did this, I fully stand behind all my demands of this so-called figurehead of Christmas (which in and of itself I think is complete hooky, but who am I to offend any of the children there).  Anyway, here is my list:

1.)  Santa, please please please eliminate rap music.  Yes, the very type of music I’ve grown up on I now want eliminated.  Why?  Because it sucks so bad that it sometimes takes my breath away.  What used to be a lyrical synergy of metaphors, awesomely fresh production and astounding storytelling mixed with the kind of beat that would make you stop and dance upon hearing the first few bars has become a bloated, uninspired, mysogenstic, uncreative, vulgar mess that can only be stopped once people quit buying what these major labels are trying to sell.  Take one look at Lil’ Wayne and…well it sums up that for me.

2.)  Santa, please bring me a new vaccum cleaner.  I need a vaccum that is lightweight (because I have stairs), can do multiple surfaces (I have carpet, tile and hardwood) but very powerful (I also have an infant and a small dog).  I don’t know if I want to throw down money for a Dyson, but if that’s the only one that does all of that–then well do what your Santaness can do.

3.)  Santa please bring me a mail(wo)man who knows how to put the mail in the correct mailbox so we don’t have to play mail exchange with our neighbors.

4.)  Santa, please let people know their national geography.  I’m so so tired of people confusing Wisconsin with Minnesota. Or people who say “There’s black people in Wisconsin?”  Or people who think that the midwest is nothing but farms and filled with bumpkins who have never heard of a big city.  Newsflash, I’m from Wisconsin which borders Minnesota and Illinois and Michigan (yes the pennisula is Michigan’s) and my hometown is an actual city with an actual metro population above one million and–gasp–I’m black (as are 14 percent of the city) and I don’t live on a farm!!  Who would have thunk it?!

5.)  Santa, please bring me a well thought out data plan for my dissertation.  If I have this, then 2012 will be sooooooo easy when it comes to school.  But I have a feeling this more than likely will not happen.

These are just the little things on my list.  I don’t think that its too much to ask you know?  You may notice that I did not include things such as “end world hunger” or “find a cure of all diseases” because I figured that many people would ask for that and I wanted to ask for a different kind of list.  Oh and I do reserve the right to update this list before Christmas as well.

What’s on your Christmas wish list?  Do you think you are going to get everything you ask for?

Yes!! It’s the Christmas season!! Whoo hoo and what what!  I am so shaking my body as I’m typing this and you know why?  Because I’m excited!! Although I thought that I was going to be behind in my Christmas decorating I managed to get finish it this year.  So now I am sharing my holiday home decor and cleaning tips for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls and Great Cleaners.  Check me out!!

Now 2011 is my son’s first Christmas and that is fab.  Being that he now wants to touch and pull and push on EVERYTHING my husband and I decided that we would get a small tree instead of our green montrosity (I mean large tree).

I love a modern type tree!

I love this tree so much that I’m getting rid of the green tree and will purchase a large white tree for next year.  I wanna go modern like that.

This year I am also shifting decor colors and I wanted to incoporate simple Christmas touches instead of going full force.  So that means that the house generally looks the same, but there are subtle decorations in white/clear, blues, silver and gold.  It allows me to blend the decorations into the way my house usually looks instead of it mimicking a giant gingerbread house.  After all, when the lil’ one gets a lil’ older, I’ll have plenty of time to decorate it the way he wants.

Now preparing the house for Christmas is no easy feat, especially with an infant.  He has his toys and books everywhere and of course there’s his eating place.  Needless to say, a lot of cleaning (everything from straighting up to extensive work) is involved and is done a lot.  I typically use the crappiest vaccum on earth (of which I hope my husband will ignore the sterotype that women don’t want appliances for Christmas because I totally do and what the heck am I going to do with another bracelet? I can’t clean with that ish.) and some awesome cleaning products I got on HSN to regularly keep up with the cleaning. 

I’m also really particular about organizing so all of the decorations are neatly stowed away outside for easy retrival and then put back outside so our items aren’t that disorganized.

My house also has both carpet and big tile flooring so mopping and sweeping is a must.  My husband must mop at least three times a week.  (He’d do it more often if he had the time cause that’s his thing).  But what I really need to do is find a place to put this eyesore:

I mean, he doesn’t even like going into his pack n’ play.  It’s just a big ole toybox or a potential jungle gym.  I can’t even decorate it without it being a choking hazard.  Got any suggestions???  Please???

Well yes, I’ve done it.  I’ve gone ahead and become addicted to home shopping.

Now before you go all like…wha?  You need help, you need to get that fixed, let me say that I am prone to dramatics.  So I’m not all foaming at the mouth if I don’t get to a television to watch the latest Today’s Special, but I have found a new appreciation for the practice of shopping at home.

I don’t really know how it got started.  I think that I was flipping channels one day (on a rare day off) and I came upon a gentlemen selling bracelets.  But they were some of the most beautiful bracelets I’d ever seen.  I was like “…wow, those are hot!”  but I didn’t want to pay for them.  Still days later they were on my mind until someone (who is a stylist) told me that personal style is whatever I make of it and if I see a piece I love and don’t get it, and then think about it for days later, I should probably get it (if I can afford it).

So that’s what I did.  And I loved the purchase!!  The next day I turned to it again with my husband and it showcased stuff cooks like.  Hubby, being the chef of the family, fell in love with a pressure cooker and BAM–we got it.  Now I can cook pot roast in twenty minutes.

Over the last five months I’ve gotten everything from bedding to other electronics to skin care items and jeans.  And let me tell you–there is not one thing I would take back.  And you can, I just don’t need to because the stuff is that awesome.

I never thought I would be like that though…but some of the items are too good to pass up with good deals to go with it.  And it beats going to the store any day of the week (watch for my post on that).  So that’s how it goes. 

And yes, the cheesy presentations and the extra (sometimes overly) excited hosts are hilarious!  Everything is so cool or so important or so brimming with quality that these people may actually convince you that you need a pasta strainer in your life.

But don’t worry–I only get the things I need…I don’t junk up the house with crap.  But I don’t recognize a good deal when I see it. 

Tell me, are you a home shopping addict?  Have you tried home shopping before?  Does it beat going to the mall for items?

The holidays are my FAVORITE time of year!  Yes I love them so much that I put it in all caps. 

I love all the holidays too–Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.   Love it, Love it, Love it!!  I’m the girl who sends Christmas cards and puts up her tree in November and sings carols and participates in the church play and all that (But I’m not annoying or anything.  Really I’m not).

But I have someone who is so the opposite of me that its driving me crazy!

My spouse is a big ole Grinch.

Yeah I said it.

I love him of course, but man what a killjoy.  All this talk about “why should invest in Christmas cards, I call people.”  or “Jesus was not really born on December 25.” (Which duh…I know that the calendar is vastly different then it was in 250 A.D. or 1000 B.C. in a countries that are not the United States)

I just want him to get into the spirit of the holidays with me and now that we have a child, I’m even more excited!

So what do you all think?  Is there a way that I can break through and get him to be my holiday elf or should I just go sit my happy self down somewhere?  Let me know because I need some assistance here!!