The Anti- Me

The style of my home is what might be called, "garage sale chic". The word "chic" is French, it means "cheap".  So here is my take on holiday decorating....... we have enough chic shit laying around this house without adding stuff that has an expiration date! Holiday decorating adds up to just one thing, and that is more work. It is a well known fact that I am violently opposed to such.

By the way, anyone who is reading this who has a big holiday display or who even enjoys it is exempt from any comments I may make with terms such as gaudy, tacky or useless. By virtue of being a blog reader you are obviously intelligent and with unimpeachable taste and so clearly this does not apply to you. Also, I do not wish to alienate everyone in one fell post. If you love it, I love it. I am talking about other people. Mwah!

I digress.

It seems that I have given birth to The Anti- Me. On a dark, drunken night long ago in a land far away known as Chicago, a stray sperm showed off to the others and actually hit the target but with one massive error. The DNA possessed in that little sperm contained The Decorating Gene!  It so happens that I can trace the biological responsibility for that crap directly up the family twig. However, marriage vows prevent me from getting any more specific. What I can discuss is my own spawn. My pink- loving, doll- playing, holiday- decoration- coveting, even- though- I- gave- up- caffeine- for- you- ya'- little- ingrate daughter Teena. 

Safe to say I do not care for holiday decorating. I find I get more than enough at other people's houses, not to mention they usually do a far greater job of it than I could ever dream of. Stepping into any retail store after Halloween fills in stray gaps that might lead me to decorate anything myself. Honestly though, it is the outrageous overkill that bothers me. The shameless overindulgence that Christmas has become.

It was only after Genea arrived that we even bought a tree to put up, and I think there is a good chance there is nothing in nature that quite resembles it. But see for Teena, her greatest distress has been how we do not decorate outside. Look, she points out whenever we go somewhere, those people have decorations and we don't! Her other complaint on a repeating loop is, look at our house, no one could even tell we are having a holiday, there are no decorations!
 

Unfortunately, I love my little girls and my little girls wish desperately for a decorated holiday home. (By wish desperately, I mean they have commenced with such elephantine whining that I would like to remove my hearing mechanism with a wine corkscrew). (Get it? Whine/ wine? HA!).

If she had her way, this would be our house:

This is how it might look at night. From an airplane:

I found the above pictures on the most hilarious website:
Ugly Christmas Lights


This is my ideal decoration:

Right, you don't see anything there, do you.

To really clinch evidence of the profound DNA error that occurred, I present to you the following.

The child likes Christmas music. 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, come on! We were painting picture frames for their school pictures to send as gifts and I had put on some music. Teena crabbed and grumbled that "they should really be playing Christmas music right now". During a Prince song.  Seems she must have thought I had the radio on, when in fact it was my ipod.  My child, fruit of my soul and stretch marks, fussed and complained during "Let's Go Crazy"! 

I did not mention that I had control over any of it. Serves her right for whining while Prince was in the house.

So. 

Ugh.

I let Christmas music come into the house. With the echo of whining still vibrating my brain, I bought up a bunch of cheap ornaments and bows to put outside. Then, I put them outside. Discreetly. In a non- tacky fashion. Yo ho ho!

PS Don't forget to enter the book giveaway below- I'm drawing a winner in 2 more days!