O Tannenbaum

I do love my Christmas tree, which has looked exactly like this since 1993.

When I was 22 and recently out of college, I couldn't fly home for Thanksgiving thanks to my crummy $8 an hour job. Oh, the stories I could tell about living off $240 a week. It wasn't pretty.

I was thoroughly depressed about spending Thanksgiving alone in my scary ghetto apartment, but around 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving night I had an inspiration:

I have my father's credit card!
It's for emergencies!
I'm depressed!
Retail therapy is an emergency!

Further inspiration struck when I turned on the television and saw that Garden Ridge was having a 72-hour Shop-a-Thon. Now if you don't live in South Texas, let me clue you into Garden Ridge. It is the biggest flipping store EVER. Think of it as the floral department at Michael's on crack. The store is actually three HUGE warehouses connected by narrow causeways.

And when Garden Ridge says Shop-a-Thon, they mean it. The store doesn't close, even at midnight on Thanksgiving night.

I quickly justified my reason for charging up a storm on my dad's credit card and headed up to Garden Ridge. It's 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving so you'd think that most people would be at home in an L- tryptophan-induced coma. But you'd be wrong, because Black Friday starts early at Garden Ridge. The parking lot was PACKED and I had to park in a gravel-covered mudhole behind the warehouses.

But I needed the therapy, so I braved the cold and the mud. And then I grabbed a big orange shopping cart and happily filled it with silk roses and golden pears and some berry things that would never exist in nature. But darn it, they looked pretty.

One hundred-fifty dollars later I happily drove home. I was all hopped up on the cinnamon potpourri smell that is piped throughout Garden Ridge, and I would have decorated the tree right then and there if, in fact, I had a Christmas tree. But HEB isn't open round-the-clock like Garden Ridge, so I had to wait until the following night to buy a 6-foot tree and throw all those decorations on it.

Now that I have three kids, we also have a wide assortment of handmade ornaments. I have two tubs of glittered snowmen, clay handprints, and popsicle stick stables. Those ornaments have a special place in my heart, but not on my tree. For a while we had two Christmas trees so the kids could decorate the one upstairs with all their ornaments. But last year I got tired of putting together the old-fashioned artificial tree with it's color-coded branches, so I bought a pre-lit tree from Costco that assembles in five minutes flat.

I do love the Costco tree, but it wasn't cheap. So this year we have one Christmas tree like normal people. Right after Thanksgiving I asked the kids if we could do the "pretty tree" this year instead of hanging all the ornaments, and they all agreed. Next year I hope I can buy a second tree so the kids can have their homemade ornaments upstairs, but I'm too OCD to mix the two styles on one tree.

Housekeeping Blues

Yesterday I whirled and twirled around my house like a dervish doing laundry, scrubbing bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen, and wrapping the last few presents.

I moved all day long and today there are dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and dirty bathrooms.

At least the presents are still wrapped.

I know, this is life. Life is dirty. But the futility of it all is getting me down.

On the bright side, I had company yesterday. One of the Amys spent the day here so she could write an article on her laptop. At one point she looked at me and said, "You don't ever stop, do you?"

The ultimate irony? She spent the day here because her housekeeper was cleaning her house. She didn't want to be in the housekeeper's way so she sought refuge over here.

Please Santa, can't I have a housekeeper, too? Just every other week to scrub the bathrooms and change the sheets?

Kevin has never had a housekeeper and pretty much thinks it's a sin to pay someone to clean your house.

I, however, grew up with a live-in housekeeper who did windows and made an incredible lemon meringue pie.

Two different worlds, I tell you. And granted, my sisters and I weren't exactly industrious when it came to cleaning the house as kids. I won't lie: we were downright lazy.

But I don't think I'm being lazy now. I'm just trying not to be depressed when I spend a whole day cleaning but still don't have a clean house.

Am I alone in this?

Cheap Gas!

Guess how much I paid for gas in San Antonio today. C'mon, guess!

$1.36. Per gallon.

For the record, that's cheaper than it was when my son was born five years ago.

For my fellow San Antonians, the dirt-cheap prices were found at the Walmart and Valero stations at Nacogdoches and Loop 1604.

You're welcome.

Controlled Holiday Spending

Several years ago our family tried to enact a three-gift rule per child. Our reasoning was that if Jesus only got three gifts, why did our kids need more?

To say that this didn't fly with the grandparents is an understatement. The plan totally backfired and the in-laws had to rent a U-Haul to bring all their presents to town.

Oh, I kid. Sort of. Let's just say that we filled multiple Hefty bags with wrapping paper and the trash men had to call in reinforcements at our curb the following week.

I've learned my lesson about trying to place gift guidelines on the grandparents. In a word: Don't.

However, I still desire to have a three-gift rule for our IMMEDIATE family. Grandparents and aunts and uncles are CLEARLY EXEMPT from this rule. (I'm trying for a little reverse psychology here. Maybe if I GIVE THEM THE FREEDOM to go hog wild they'll actually reign in the overabundance this year. Yeah right.)

The problem is that last year I got caught up with all the gift-buying, myself. I don't know what happened, but about a week before Christmas I realized that I had bought WAY too many presents for my own kids. I shop early and try to catch deals and discounts when they occur, and apparently I did not keep track of my purchases at all.

This year, however, I'm under control. And I'd love to share with you what I'm giving my kids, but The Fashionista reads this blog and I can't ruin her Christmas morning by revealing my secrets early.

Here's what I love about the three-gift rule, though: It really makes me think about each child and carefully plan what to buy. It forces me to stop and reconsider what I'm picking out BEFORE it goes under the tree. It forces me to stop in the aisles of Target and ask myself, "Do we REALLY need another Littlest Pet Shop animal?" (The answer is NO, by the way.)

Now to clarify, the Christmas stockings are also exempt from the three-gift rule. Stockings are filled with fun little treats, so I don't count those as one of the gifts.

Likewise, some gifts may have many pieces. A box of books, for example, counts as one gift. This week I was able to earn free books by volunteering at the local Scholastic Warehouse Sale. I spent a few hours each day restocking books, which I found highly enjoyable. It was pleasant, mindless work and I got to browse books the entire time. Even better, I earned $120 in vouchers which I spent at the sale to purchase books that were half-price! In other words, I earned about $250 in books which are now divided into three boxes and wrapped under the tree. I was very grateful for the opportunity to earn some free gifts for the kids, and I'm even more grateful that they all LOVE to read!

Most of all, I'm so glad that my children know that Christmas isn't really about the gifts, anyway. It's about Christ's miraculous birth, about the fact that God loves each of us so much that we sent His Son to live on earth and ultimately be sacrificed on the cross. It's about knowing that as much as I love my own children and desire give them meaningful gifts, God loves us even more and gave us the perfect gift of salvation through Jesus. And all the wrapping paper in the world can't make that gift any more beautiful than it already is.

To Train Up a Child

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by all the many things I need to teach my children.

Bible verses.
Basic culinary skills.
The art of sorting laundry.
How to properly restock the toilet paper roll (rolling over the top, of course).

But tonight I walked into the kitchen and overheard my 5-year-old son singing a sweet little song to himself.

Eight six seven five three oh ni-yine,
eight six seven five three oh ni-yine.

Oh yes, my son was singing Tommy Tutone's classic 80s hit "Jenny," also known as "867-5309."

My work here is done.

Homemade Christmas Gifts: Stepping Stones

The grandparents are always a little tough to buy Christmas presents for, so this year we are making all their gifts. For Father's Day the kids and I made stepping stones for Kevin, and they were so successful that we are making another set for his parents.

Supplies Needed:

1. A 60-pound bag of mortar, which cost less than $4 at Home Depot. The hardest part was hauling this out to my car.
2. A heavy-duty stepping stone mold. Avoid buying those lightweight, clear-plastic molds; they are pretty flimsy and likely to crack after the first use. I bought the heavy black plastic molds at Hobby Lobby (using my coupon, of course).
3. Pebbles, glass marbles, or other decorative items. We bought glass marbles at Michael's when they were on sale for $1 a bag. The marbles come in various colors and some fun shapes.

Step One: Mix the mortar.

I suppose you could just use a bucket and a big stick for this process, but I didn't want to get my only bucket dirty. So I used a flat cardboard box (the kind sodas or cans are shipped in) and a large trash bag. I laid the bag flat in the box, poured in 15 pounds of mortar, made a well in the middle, and then poured in some water. To mix, I just pulled up on the edges of the trash bag and folded the mortar over onto itself. The process really worked well. Be careful not to add too much water -- you want the mortar to be wet but not runny.

Step Two: Fill the mold.

The key here is to avoid air bubbles. Use a trowel to transfer large dollops of mortar to the mold. Use the back of the trowel to smooth out the mortar as if you were frosting a cake. Then pick up the entire mold by the edges and gently drop it onto the ground a few times. This helps the mortar settle and eliminates those pesky air bubbles that could cause your stepping stones to crack later.

Step Three: Decorate the stone.

If your mortar is the right consistency, you should be able to decorate the stone immediately. If you place a couple pebbles and they start to sink, remove them and wait 5 or 10 minutes until the mortar sets up a little more. Helpful tip: Start from the middle and work your way outward. Press down a little so about one-third of the pebble is buried. When you have finished placing all the decorations, place a second, empty mold or a large pot onto the surface and gently press down. This will make the pebbles lay as flat as possible.

Step Four: Wait.

The mortar needs to cure, which takes a few days. Don't be impatient and try to remove the stepping stone too early or the whole thing could crack or crumble.

Step Five: Cleaning it up.
When the mortar is completely cured, test it out by standing on it. If it's solid, flip the stone out onto a grassy or otherwise cushioned area. Then flip it again so the decorated surface is up. Take an old toothbrush and some water and scrub the surface to clean the extra mortar and dust off the decorations.

Seriously, these were so easy to make! They are so much bigger and sturdier than if we'd used one of those kits from the craft store. Even better, those kits cost $20 each, whereas our supplies only cost $20 for FIVE stepping stones. The kids are going to make some red, white and blue Texas flag stones for Grandma and Grandpa next week. I'll post photos when they are finished!