Christmas Decor 2012

Hooray-- it's Christmas Home Tour time again! If you're visiting from Kelly's Korner-- welcome! 

I love Christmas, I love decorating, I love crafting...so I'm gonna try to not majorly overkill with the pictures and commentary here, but no promises.

I feel like I say this every time I do some sort of 'home tour,' but my living room is kind of long and narrow and awkward to photograph. And there's no good "Christmas Tree Spot," which I am definitely going to remedy if we ever move. So the tree just kind of...chills out and blocks the path. Whatever. It's fine...I just wanted to warn you first.

So just inside the front door, behind the couch, we have the piano area under invasion by the tree. 

I didn't put quite as much Christmas decor on the piano this year as I did last year...a lot of the decorations that are normally on the mantel (portrait of Lola, "it is well" sign) got relocated here for the season. It's fun seeing your 'old' stuff in new places!

Backing up from the couch a bit, you can see the tree, door/wreath, and bookcase with my nativity on top.

Greetings, wise men and cow.

One of my ten thousand yarn wreaths. But I like this one rather a lot.

And if you happened to be 3 inches tall and sitting on the coffee table, this would be your view towards the front of the house...

The view from the kitchen archway:

I did a post last week all about my Christmas mantel, so I'll spare you from repeat pictures and details here! 

This is the view from the front door.

We have our photo cards pinned to ribbon on the door to our bedroom. I love seeing all the pretty pictures every time I walk by!

What, you don't fancy up your favorite stack of young adult novels on an end table and call it decor?? Don't judge...

And finally, a little sample of the ornaments on the tree. My tree is a mish-mash-- no theme, other than "stuff I like." There are store-bought ornaments, crafted-by-me ornaments, crafted-by-other-crafty-people ornaments, saved-from-when-I-was-a-baby ornaments...no discrimination here! As long as everything's evenly dispersed, we're good. Here are a few of my favorites:

Look, it's the angel version of me! Look, it's Baby Erika!! Look, my sister-in-law made me a Scrabble ornament for my birthday!!

Well that's all the decor I'll torture you with today. If you're jonesing for more, feel free to check out my home tour from last Christmas!

And if you're a regular around here, then you may recall that Matt's surgery is today (Friday). It's scheduled to start at 12:30 and we'd appreciate your prayers! If all goes well, we should head into 2013 with renewed hope and excitement for good things and babies...so, no pressure, doctors, but today's sorta a big day for us. Don't screw this up!

PS. Thanks for all the birthday love Wednesday!! It was a fabulous day-- we offset the bummer-ness of pre-op by hitting up TWO high-quality Atlanta malls, a Nordstrom Rack (twice), and some delicious Indian food. And I bought an obscene amount of Urban Decay makeup. And I have no regrets. Anyway, 30 is off to a great start!

PPS. During pre-op the nurse wrote/spoke the phrase "scrotal exploration" a few times and I DIED laughing. And also maybe snorted. I'm sorry. I might be 30, but I will never be old or mature or boring enough to not crack up at that phrase. Holy crap.

the 12/12/12

Well, my long-awaited birthday has finally arrived! Thirty years old on 12/12/12. Magical, I tell ya.

Here I am on my first 12/12. The one that occurred in 1982. And look-- I was 12 hours old! Even cooler. I bet my dad planned it like that. I bet he'd already calculated that I'd be turning 30 on 12/12/12, too. He's nerdy like that.

I guess I was pretty adorable. And was already working on my Dr. Evil pinky finger move. I've always been ambitious like that.

Anyway. Since you asked-- yes, I do have riveting plans for the big day.  A half day of work, then a trip to Atlanta for Matt's pre-op appointment. An appointment at which I have promised Matt I am going to embarrass the both of us by asking/reminding the doctor several times to please not accidentally cut Matt's man-parts off during surgery. I mean, if you can't say stupid stuff like that on your 30th birthday on 12/12/12, when can you? Exactly.

So...hope you have an enjoyable day, and even if you're not turning 30 today, I hope you do something fun at 12:12 pm, because...I mean, that's just awesome no matter what.

don't hate, michigan.

I saw this headline on Yahoo a few minutes ago. 

Except I didn't see "unions." I saw "unicorns."

And then I spent about 3 minutes wondering why Michigan is so full of unicorn-haters...why would they do such a thing?

And then I reread it and it all became clear. Unions. Oh. Boring.

On my last day of 29-hood, my eyes started failing. And apparently my mind, too, because who seriously takes that long to realize that "Michigan passes law limiting unicorns" doesn't even kinda make sense? 

Oy vey.

two birds, one stone

Well it's Monday again, isn't it. The last Monday of my twenties, to be exact. Not that I'm counting or anything. What I am counting is the number of items on my 30/30 list that still remain to be done. Time is running out! Desire to play video poker and the piano is running low! How will I ever get it all done??!

Anyway, as I mentioned last week, Matt and I killed two birds with one stone by making a vlog about JAV, the game we invented a few months ago. (Side note: You have no idea how much I love the expression "killed two birds with one stone." For multiple reasons. 1) I hate birds. 2) My maiden name is Stone. 3) The phrase implies efficiency, something I'm rather fond of. See how awesome that phrase is now?) So since most of you seemed to be appropriately amused by our car interview videos and the outtakes of me figuring out how to act in front of a camera (I never really did figure it out), I suppose I can share the "real" video with you now.

So today shall henceforth and forevermore be known as The Day You Learned How To Play JAV. Consider yourself lucky.

The video's about 2 and a half minutes long. I dunno...sometimes I just like to know what kind of time commitment I'm looking at before I watch a video. So just in case you're that way, too...now you know.

Now, wasn't that educational??

Right.

So.

Then we played our game of JAV. As you recall, my actual 30/30 goal was "Beat Matt at a game of JAV." If you're wondering whether I accomplished that goal, you may want to take a peak at this riveting post-JAV interview (25 seconds).

And thus concludes the vlog sharing for the day. And most likely the near future. I think we can all agree I should stick with writing and not so much things that involve being in front of or behind a camera. So sad, though. All those aspirations of Real Housewives fame....dashed. What a bummer.