Don't.press."buy now"! and other unrelated ramblings

In an effort not to fall victim to every "buy me" email that comes into my mailbox in these weeks before Christmas, I've been concentrating my web surfing on collecting home-related ideas. As much as I struggled with a waning love of our Loco house during the summer, I'm completely in love all over again. There's something about driving up to our blue-gray house on a cold, snowy day with little puffs of steam/smoke/cat breath coming out of the little stack on the roof that makes me feel so cozy.

I even like the Christmas tree this year. The kids continued their tradition of decorating it with all of our collected ornaments and then adding a few new ones. A made a whole bunch of new ornaments with hardware odds and ends, embroidery floss, and colorful Sharpies. It looks ready for presents (if only Santa and Santa's husband would get going on the wrapping!).

I'm looking forward to both this renewed love and our ER-depleted savings accounts as inspiration for 2012: The Year of the Low-Cost Home Improvements. For starters? My parents offered to swap out the (front loading!!) washer and dryer from a house they own out of town for our (still serviceable... once the new dryer belt is installed) trusty old-school Maytags. We already have the dryer and all I can say is WOW. Who knew clothes could dry in less than an hour. This development does, however, cut into my "I'm waiting for the dryer to finish" couch potato opportunities during the day. The sacrifices I make....

Now, if the washer manages to turn our once-white-now-gray towels back to white? Awesome.

Other than that, I have some painting projects, some cleaning projects, some send-everyone-out-of-the-house-so-I-can-throw-things-away-with-impunity projects, and perhaps even a few sewing projects planned.

I'm also obsessed with white+knotty wood interiors.

Hello, gorgeous! I'd post a bunch more here but you may as well just go to the source of this image (and most of my house+home porn), "My Scandinavian Retreat" - see the sidebar. LOVE it.

We're making tamales on Christmas eve. Again. Because they're the greatest food on Earth. I do believe that's called a tradition.

We're making plans for even more animals in the Spring because apparently we need the chaos (and the poop). For those of you on Robin Insanity Watch 2011-2012 (buy the t-shirt!), they'll all be outside critters. Oh, how I love outside critters...

The stretch of school between Thanksgiving break and Winter break is officially the longest 3 weeks in the entire school year. We have such a collection of makeshift countdown calendars popping up around the house you'd think we have something wildly exciting planned. We don't.

I didn't bother with Christmas cards. It's not because I don't love you... it's because I don't love Christmas cards (except the ones you send... with funny little pictures, "holiday letters" - tell me you love to giggle at those, too - and even the odd bible verse or two):

Genesis 25:30 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
He said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of that red stuff, because I'm exhausted."

OR (for every chat-weary antisocial holiday party attendee):

Job 13:5 (New International Version)
If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.

OR (I'm talkin' to you, Poppy)

Proverbs 31:6 (New International Version)
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

Amen.