On a much happier note...

So, Christmas is over and it's officially the new year. Welcome to 2011. Woot.


As an annual requirement of existence I will now share my list of resolutions in order of their likelihood of surviving the month:
1) Stop laughing obscenely loudly at inappropriate times/ things.
     -Replace behavior with: quiet snickering that can be transformed into a cough if necessary
2) Learn how to recognize inappropriate times/ things, I will accomplish this by studying the speeches of Sarah Palin as everything she says is inappropriate.
     -She has that new show right? On TLC? This should be easy...
3) Stop referencing my pet fiddler crabs in Wal-mart as 'our crabs' just to see the reaction from the old bag wearing the leopard print behind us in line. (Honey did we pick up stuff for our crabs this month?)
4) Read more. The TV Guide menu doesn't count... Neither does the scrolling sign that is visible from the McDonald's drive thru.
5) Only spend money on things we need. Condoms, milk duds, and the fourth season of Big Love. No more spending money on non-essentials like gym memberships, hair cuts, and foods that give me gas.


Ah I feel better already. This is going to be a great year!

Dear Friends, ...Merry Christmas.

Okay, I'm writing this post because I love you all, you are all important to me and I care about you enough to be your friend in real life and not just on Facebook. I'm always here if you need me, no matter what you are going though, no matter what time of day it is, no matter how long it has been since I have actually seen your face.

I know you all care about me just as much, which is how I already know that you wish me a Merry Christmas. 

Please, please, please, please, please. PLEASE. Plz? DO NOT mass text me tomorrow to wish me a merry Christmas. Unlike most people I still pay for my texts and there are very few things that ruin my holidays more than knowing that at least 15 of my friends are going to text me and run up my cell phone bill. So, if you really do care about me please, please, please, take that extra 10 seconds to uncheck my name from you mass text list tomorrow. I would really appreciate it and I would have a 'Merry-er' Christmas because of it. 

If you would like to wish me a Merry Christmas, you are more than welcome to post on my wall or comment on this post I will see it. Promise. :)

Thank you all so much and Merry Christmas.

Fa-la-la-la-la la la la la

Does this piss anyone else off, or is it just me?

It's that time of year again.

The temperature has dropped. The snow has started to fall. Christmas Carols can be heard twenty four hours a day on 94.3 The Bridge. And my neighbors have started putting up their Christmas lights.

Now, before I start this nice little rant let me say this, I like Christmas. I like Santa. I'm even cool with Jesus (regardless of the fact that he is NOT the reason for the season). I like hot apple cider, and Christmas cookies. I swear I'm not about to start a Jihad against Christmas.

However, I'm not okay with the sickness that seems to overcome people in this country around the holidays which allows them to blatantly disregard the energy crisis we are currently facing.

The United States of America makes up for 20% of the energy consumed in the entire world. That would be okay if we supported 20% of the world population or even if we were consuming energy mainly from a renewable source, but neither condition is accurate. We only support 5% of the world population, and our main energy resources continue to be refined fossil fuels.

I swear I must be the only one who throws up a little in my mouth when I see the Smith's over there setting up three six ft tall blow-up characters, a light up nativity set, Santa and all the reindeer on their roof, and about 912,670 lights.

Not only are these displays grotesque, but these people actually make money off their gluttony! There are bus tours for citizens who want to view their houses and make donations to their energy bills!

I know most of the people in this country are mindless wasting machines who have been systematically conditioned to not give a shit about how much they consume (this goes for food and manufactured goods as well), but it really comes out full force around the holidays.

Countless Christmas parties where we are invited to stuff ourselves so full we have to unbutton our pants a little under the table. Christmas morning arrives and where little boys and girls used to receive one or two presents from Santa, they now carelessly unwrap one toy and throw it aside to unwrap the next, not even taking the time to fully appreciate what the first toy was before discarding it. And lets not forget those lights, doesn't this bother anyone else?

Just so we're clear, I'm talking about this:

This is bad, if your house looks like this: seek help. 

Not this:

This is okay, it looks very nice. Good work. 

So, one more time. This:

No good

Not this:

Very good, tasteful.

Some lights are fine, they look nice, they are very Christmas spirit-y. I have three strands myself, and when I have my own house I'm sure I'll have more. I'm talking about the ones that are outrageous, the houses where you know they are spending hundreds of dollars on electricity for their Christmas decorations alone. It's wrong, it's selfish, it's wasteful, most of the time it's downright ugly, but mainly it's completely unnecessary. I promise your neighbors aren't going to think less of you if you don't plaster your house with the usual 300 ugly, light-up, blow-up, confetti filled decorations this year. In fact they'll probably thank you if you don't, since now they can fall asleep at night without drawing the black out curtains. 

Homemade Christmas Cards!!

As some of you may already know, I am currently without gainful employment. Financially I am totally screwed, but it does leave me with a certain amount of free time. So my mother (who is also without gainful employment) and I got together these past couple of weeks and decided to try out my paper making kit! (If you are interested you can purchase one of your very own at the Paper Discovery Center in Appleton). So we spent hours and hours and hours making home made paper, then we spent more hours and hours and hours decorating that homemade paper and turning it into something wonderful and full of love to send to our family and friends for Christmas!!

See? Adorable!

 I, however, completely forgot that I wrote out my Christmas Cards last year, stamped them up, and totally missed sending them out. They are still sitting in my cupboard waiting to get their moment in the sun... er, snow... So, I'm going to go ahead and send those out to my family and friends and sell these amazing, homemade Christmas cards on Esty.com, with homemade envelopes to match! They are listed now. If you are interested there is a link down and to the right that will take you to my store where you can see them all.

 Now, if you are at all interested in making your own homemade Christmas cards without spending the money to purchase a paper making kit and stamps (which can be super expensive, luckily these were all things I happened to have lying around from more fruitful years past) you can find some pretty cheap card making supplies at craft stores like Hobby Lobby. They have boxes of cards already cut and folded, all you have to do is decorate them! It's a lot of fun, seriously inexpensive and it's something you can do with your sisters, mom, kids or girlfriends. It's like scrap-booking without the long term commitment!