Seven Days Before Christmas 2011

2011 Front Window

Here I sit with the sun reaching in and warming the den and casting silhouettes of the poinsettia and bubble candles onto the sofa while the suns rays reach beyond them to climb the curtains!  I really LOVE the beauty and the simplicity.  It also is really cool that it took me almost an hour to decorate the house.  I have "Gramma Gin's Christmas Trunk" open with Great Gramma Pendergast's homemade quilt lining it and all the family human and pet stockings draped over the edges with Santa hats on the corners.  That is right.  No fussing.  No buying more stuff.  No missing the Christmas tree.  Just smiling and enjoying each moment! 

Oh NO, I just looked out the den window beyond the decorations and see that I didn't get the front window washed this fall!  Horrors!!!  My mind is racing back in time to a former life where I would have sprung into immediate action faster than Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixon on Christmas Eve to repair this astonishing failing by 1) CLOSING the curtains and keeping them closed until the first warm day of spring when I can get outside and wash the window or 2) race out to the garage, yank the 8' step ladder off the east wall, return to house and grab my brand spanking new Norwex cleaning and polishing cloths and dash outside and get the window cleaned before anyone else could witness this horrific event!

But this is 2011 and I have discovered how full and rich life can be - how it is so much bigger than the den window that is dirty on the outside and clean on the inside!  That is not to say that having a clean and orderly home doesn't matter - it does, but it is no longer THE A-1 priority in my life.  There really is so much more!

So here I sit, blogging about my 1951 bungalow simply and beautifully decorated for Christmas.  I also celebrate that it took me less than a minute to recover from the voice in my head that tried to get me to feel guilty about the blasted dirty window.  Nipped in the bud!  And in the time it took me to create this blog post, the sun has moved west - I can no longer see any dirt on the window anyway!    Taddddaaaaahhhh!