Lunatic Fringe: Christmas with the Hatches

In late October Ryan said to me, "We really need to do a better job of decorating the house for the holidays. For the kids. It really makes them excited and gets them in the spirit."

I looked around and noticed that the only thing that could pass for Halloween decor were a few cobwebs above the bookcase and a decapitated Barbie doll. Overwhelmed with guilt, I rushed to Hobby Lobby and bought a dozen craft pumpkins, a ghost pillow, a foofy witche's hat, and a bat wreath. Then I raided my craft room for orange fabric and whipped up an adorable pillow that says "BOO!" in a very cute font. I carved a few pumpkins and set out some Halloween-inspired picture frames that I whipped up, then sat back and admired my work. The kids thought it was awesome and I got a pat on the back from Ryan.

Well, Christmas was the next holiday that warranted home decor (I don't believe in decorating for Thanksgiving, on the grounds that leaves and turkeys just aren't cute and all things Thanksgiving related should be eaten), so in early December I collected bits of festive treasure everywhere I went. From Target to Home Depot to TJMaxx, I expertly chose the items that would make our home merry and bright and be the least likely to be destroyed by my children in less that a week. I picked out new decorations for our tree, and many, many strands of lights to adorn the outside of our home (remember hearing that the economy experienced a boost over the holidays? that was me). I even made a wreath to hang on our front door. Out of silver balls. Now that's classy.

We had the pleasure of hosting the Aho Family Christmas at our home this year, and most of the Aho's frown upon artificial trees, so I insisted on picking out a REAL CHRISTMAS TREE this year. Early one Saturday two weeks before Christmas Layla and Ryan went to a lot by our house and Lay picked out the PERFECT tree. O Tannenbaum! She was a beaut. While they were tree shopping I was busy setting out all of the decorations not yet in place in our home and prepping the ornaments, lights and garlands for a night of family tree dressing.

After the laborious task of hauling an 8' pine into our house and securing it straight up in a tree stand, we decided we should put up the outdoor lights before it got dark, then decorate the tree after dinner. We took what I thought was a million miles of lights outside, and after about 30 seconds of looking at the front of the house and the dozen boxes on the lawn, Ry deduced that we needed about three times what I had bought. Before heading back to Home Depot we decided to make sure we had the right kind of clips. We didn't. So we searched the internet to find out what kind of clips would work on a shingle-style roof with no rain gutters. None. We would have to use nails. Only we're renting our house. So no nails.

After standing outside staring at our house and walking around the neighborhood uncomfortably close to other people's houses to find out how they hung their lights (nails) for the entire afternoon, and after me vetoing the idea of throwing net lighting over our bushes and putting some inflatable cartoon character in a Santa hat in our yard, we abandoned the project entirely. Layla cried, but we gave her hot chocolate with a candy cane in it and she got over it.

The tree decorating went better than we could have hoped. The kids loved helping, and it turned out absolutely gorgeous. The rest of Christmas went off without a hitch. The Aho's arrived and somehow everyone managed to find a place to sleep. We had fun at the Scottsdale Train Park playing Bocce Ball and Viking Chess and consumed enough food the week of Christmas to satisfy all the Sumos in Japan. The weather was perfect and the company was better. And our house was merry and bright. For the children.