see mom, i told ya'

Here's the short version of the story:

We bought our first house a few months ago. Now, we are trying to buy furniture to fill our house. My "must-have" when we were home shopping was a formal dining room- I was picturing it filled with our family and friends over the holidays. So, we skipped houses that didn't have one and now I have a beautiful formal dining room with vaulted ceilings and crown molding, custom paint and hardwood floors- I love it. So, now on to filling the dining room with a dining room table. I had the perfect one in mind. The only thing wrong with my perfect dining room set was the price- it was over $1200. Considering the state of the economy and the potential impact it will have/has on us, we didn't think it would be a very smart idea to be buying what we wanted.

So, instead, we are only buying what we need. So, then begs the question: well, do we really need a dining room set right now?! We have a kitchen table that we use ALL the time, will we really use a dining room set? We got our answer, because it turns out WE ARE HOSTING A HOUSE FULL OF FAMILY FOR CHRISTMAS! We definitely need that dining room set.

So, we did some investigation and ended up with a very reasonably priced 7-piece set, with beautiful cream fabric (read: no.kids.allowed.ever!) Here's a photo of it squished up in the room to accomodate our ridiculous xmas tree (more on that below):

Okay- so onto the point of this blog: we spent ALL last weekend, in search of this table- we finally found it at around 3pm on Sunday. But OUR GOAL of the weekend was to do our xmas lighting and the xmas tree. So, we felt the need to get that done also.

So, we unloaded the dining room set, and set off in search for the xmas tree! We went to three different lots- b/c I'm a VERY picky tree handler. We finally ended up at Lowes', and with the two boys about ready to drop, we just grabbed this one:

See how it looks like there are TWO TOPS to this tree? And that is so CROOKED, there was NO way to get it straight! Oh- and one more thing, we ran out of the small twinkle lights, and filled in the holes with the huge, outdoor lights. But that actually doesn't look so bad...And maybe it will look decent, once I get the tree topper on there and some gifts under the tree. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Oh well, at least it's a good family story that we'll have to share every christmas from now on! And finally, we have a HUGE palm tree in the front yard. It's very difficult to make the house looking winter-wonderful when there's a huge tropical palm in the front yard. Our plan was to light up the palm by wrapping twinkle lights around the whole thing- we significantly underestimated the size of the tree, and the amount of lights we would need. So....the tree ended up looking like this:

Hahahaha. It cracks me up just looking at this picture! Actually, it looks cuter than this picture allows. It wasn't quite dark enough when I took this one to really show you how it looks. I'll have to take a better picture tonight when it gets darker.

So, now to explain the title of this post:

My mom is Mrs. Claus- seriously, you should see her house (in fact, mom, send me some pictures of your house so I can show everybody). She's got candy villages, nativity scenes, stuffed animals, garland, lights, and The Tree- the tree is incredible!

So, needless to say, the apple didn't even come close to landing by the tree on this one! Our two houses couldn't be more opposite! But I suppose, each is beautiful in its own way and it's all about celebrating the holiday with FAMILY anyway.

And last, but certainly NOT LEAST- here is SUPER SANTA! (and yes, that is the tree skirt being used as the cape for Super Santa!)