Grab some popcorn and a Snuggie, it's Hallmark holiday movie time!

Remember that craptastic holiday movie I meant to write for the Hallmark channel last year? Well neither did I, but if I had written it why couldn't have it been this one? A young woman tries to escape a childhood spent working on her family's Christmas tree farm only to be forced to return to the biz when she loses her job. Of course, this makes her a little "fir crazy." Ba-da-bum. I am guessing the dude pictured above and kissing also play into the story. Ah, holiday magic.

Are you middle-aged?

Recently we had friends over for dinner and I was describing someone no one else in the room knew. I said "He's kind of middle-aged...you know, around my age." One of my friends laughed and said that I wasn't middle-aged. Which was reassuring, but was he right? If you look at average life expectancy I'm over halfway there. So I searched the 'net and found this British article that helped me figure it out for sure.

How I Unintentionally Marsha Brady-d My Son

Do you remember this episode of the Brady bunch? Marsha is a freshman, and in her rush to do high school right and fit in she signs up for every single club. She ends up overextended, stressed out, and doing a lot of stuff she really didn't want to do.

Well, I inadvertently did the same this to Tate this fall. A lot of his other 3-year-old friends started preschool, but he didn't seem totally ready back at application time, wasn't potty trained, plus did you know preschool in Chicago costs like a bazillion dollars? So with the words of warning from other mothers echoing in my ears---he'd be behind if he doesn't start preschool at 3! what about socialization?--I overscheduled the hell out of him.

And now a Pinterest-inspired project that didn't cause me to lose my mind

When we first moved into this place this is what our kitchen wall looked like:

We would offer to repaint it back to this color when we leave, but I'm not sure if Benjamin Moore still carries or can color-match Kind-of-Peestained-Looking White.

If you don't have a bad neighbor it might be because you ARE the bad neighbor...

Photo via williampaid.com

Are you a good neighbor? Everyone likes to  think they are, right? In fact, I would pretty much have always answered "yes" to this question, but looking back I'm pretty sure our condo neighbors didn't appreciate when, as newlyweds, Brad and I would regularly come home tipsy at 2 a.m. and engage in a good hour of living room karaoke (and no, that isn't a euphemism....we really did come home late and night and belt out a few off-key sets). The duet of  "Islands in the Stream" was a crowd-pleaser, I'm sure. But other than that I thought we were good neighbors, until we had two sets of downstairs neighbors move out of our two-flat in the last nine months.

See Your Folks

Have you heard of seeyourfolks.com? You go to the site, enter a few snippets of information about your parents ages and how often you see them, and it lets you know how many more times you'll see them before they die. Wahhh!  I still don't know the answer since I never pressed enter because I really can't handle seeing the result. But based on Tate seeing us with a frequency of "every day" (presumably forever, but that jibes well with my plan to move into his dorm room), he will see Brad and me over 12,000 more times. Not bad, considering we are older parents.

Many glasses of wine were killed to make this rug (or, how to make an upcycled braided t-shirt rug that takes a boatload of time and costs more than buying a ready-made one)

This project literally drove me to drink.