Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Oh how I love thee fall


If you have known me for more than five minutes you know I am one of those holiday people. Not in the sense that I say happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas, but the kind that just goes a bit over normal when seasonal decorations are involved. I LOVE holidays. Any excuse to decorate my house with cartoonish characters and themes just transforms me into a compulsive ADD child with a credit card. Dangerous combination, I know. I have these large holiday specific bins in my house that house all of my decorations. They are divided by season. I have 2-3 bins for Fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving, and about 4 for Christmas. I have recently cracked open the orange and black bins and I seem to have lost all common sense. Not that I had much to begin with.


Pumpkins of every size and texture are on every surface in my living room/office. I love candles so most of them are candles. I have fake flowers that are of course orange and brown, turkeys, and pictures of my kids in all their past costumes and I am quickly running out of room. I am not sure how that happened because we just moved here. Strange. Now you may think I have sunk my last pennies into decor, but you would be wrong. I am a smart and economical theme freak. I have been accumulating, not to be confused with hoarding, my decorations for the past 8 or 9 years now. I buy a few things each season I can't live without, at a discount of course, and keep them in the aforementioned bins. I have place mats, table runners, center pieces and fake leaves in every corner that I could squeeze one in. I have pumpkin spice syrup for my homemade lattes that I will buy only once a year, pumpkin and leaf shaped baking molds for the pumpkin spice bread I make every year and lets not forget Charlie Brown.


If you don't like Charlie Brown then I am going to have to reconsider our friendship. Dan doesn't like him and that has caused much dissent, but he has made up for his dislike of chuck by staying the heck outta my way from about September to January. I loved all the Peanuts specials on tv growing up. I waited every year for them. My dad still calls me when he sees they will be on tv. I love them that much. So my husband went out and bought me all of the fall and Christmas specials on dvd. So I kept him. The kids know that we can only watch The Great Pumpkin from September to Halloween and then we watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving until Thanksgiving and then The Charlie Brown Christmas until New Year's. The children know if they ask to watch the dvds in the wrong time frame they will be denied. We do not watch the Christmas Charlie Brown in July and we will not even look at the cover of the Thanksgiving dvd until Halloween has passed. It is the way decent people do it. We can quote them all, by the way. Word for word. Even Logan knows about 70% of the dialogue for all of them. That is why you may hear my kids uttering phrases like "good grief" or calling each other block heads. Its because I raised them right. And it has not escaped my attention that my son resembles my favorite holiday mascot. I think its because God loves me. Now if I can just convince him to dress up as Charlie Brown for Halloween my life will be complete.


This is just the fervor with which I approach the fall holidays. You can imagine the craft fare explosion that happens in my house for Christmas. I mean its the baby Jesus birth for crying out loud. You should do it up big and Santa should be invited. He and all his reindeer sit around next to all the angels and manger scenes that cover every flat surface of my house. Fake snow included. Does it snow in Bethlehem? Well it should, its so festive. Anyway, just know that I have set my sights on the veggie tales manger scene this year. Just a thought since my birthday is approaching in October. I think that baby Jesus would like to be depicted in vegetable form. I think its just perfect.


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