Perfektly Mary

I finally made it to the mailbox and hark, I found my ornament from my secret blogger and a yummy cheese, sausage and evil chocolate package from the grandparents. (I’m not doing so hot with the no sugar thing by the way. Bleh.)

I love this time of year. Every time I see the brown UPS truck I get all tingly. Even if it doesn’t stop at my house, the thought of people sending gifts to loved ones all over the country makes me happy. I need to be careful though, those tingly, fuzzy feelings have had me spending money I don’t actually have. It’s really hard for me to refrain myself. One of the ways I express love is through gifts, so this time of year usually gets me into trouble with the Hubbie. I want to give EVERYONE a nice gift topped off with a personalized ornament embellishing the gift wrap. He’s indifferent to whether or not we even send out Christmas cards. This is one of the differences that we’ve come to understand and we usually do a pretty good job of meeting in the middle. The past couple of years though we haven’t had much of a choice. All the moving has left us pretty strapped at the holidays and we usually end up barely getting gifts for our immediate family.

I have no idea where I’m going with this, nor can I figure out some way to tie it into a picture of my living room. So, um, here’s the picture of my new ornament on our tree.

My secret ornament swapper Betsy gave me a pickle. It’s a German tradition to hide the pickle in the tree on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning, whoever finds it has good luck or gets to open up the first present! How fun! A new Boston tradition has been born! I loved getting this from someone that was a stranger prior to this, and now she will be remembered for years to come because she started a tradition in our home.

Here’s the general overview of our living room. How’s that for random?

Yes it’s naked. A little note about that: Prior to moving this last time I was getting so sick of our temporary furniture. I couldn’t bear the thought of hauling Dustin’s bachelor couch to our new home. So I sold it on Craigslist and now we are saving up for the stuff I really want. Hopefully next Christmas we won’t still be sitting on the floor!