Photo by pfala

The workers who haul away the trash from my apartment complex are on strike, so all week long the garbage has piled up around the dumpsters.

Talk about keeping it real for Christmas Day. My scenic view doesn’t look much like the one in the picture. The streets here are wet from drizzly rain, and there is more garbage.

It gives a whole new perspective to “come as you are.” 

I don’t write a lot about being a Christian, since the words I need are usually beyond my writing ability. But sometimes it’s like Christmas Eve at my apartment building.

Jesus shows up in the middle of my mess. He doesn’t wait for me to clean it up first. Like it says, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” I am so thankful.

Photo by eyeliam

How do you capture those special holiday memories?

I try to take a lot of pictures, but I also keep a notebook just for Christmas.

This isn’t one I use for planning or lists, it’s an album the family can look through.

I try to keep it easy and simple, or else I wouldn’t do it.

Each year I add one or two pages. I choose four to six photos, and I spend a few minutes writing about our favorite memories from that year’s Christmas.

What might be included?

• Where we lived and worked.
• Fun events and parties.
• Recipes to make again.
• Special gifts given.
• Favorite traditions started and kept.
• Christmas trees and decorations.
• Funny things said.
• Who was there.
• Places traveled.
• Blessings counted.

I hope I get to look through it in fifty years and see how our family has grown and celebrated one of our favorite times of the year.

Have you seen on TV when a gift is unwrapped, the ribbon gracefully falls to the side?

Normally a ribbon tied around a gift is hard to undo. You can try to unknot it, slide it, or pull it off the side, stretching it as well as you can. Men usually reach for their pocketknives to get the job done.

Making a great-looking gift bow is actually pretty simple, even without using knots.

I made this little video to show you how.

Our family also wraps a lot of gifts using gift bags.  We reuse them every year, so some have been exchanged back and forth for years. Seeing an old familiar paper gift bag is almost a tradition in itself. (Don’t trust the tags, they could be from a prior year at our house!)

Photo by sburke2478

Want to see fewer ads this Christmas? Watch a little less TV.

If you’ve ever thought about going without TV, now really is the ideal time to try it!

We’ve been without it for almost three years, and I appreciate that the most during the holidays. (Maybe during the election, too.)

We don’t have to watch after-Thanksgiving ads, we don’t hear false promises of what will make our loved ones happy, and we don’t have the noise. It’s worth it.

Going without TV doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We do have the television set and DVD player, so we can watch movies when we want to. I can watch something online if I want to. I have more control over what Lane sees.

Now when we watch something, we have to be intentional about it. We can’t just turn on the TV.

Another tactic is to leave the TV unplugged. When you’re reaching back there to plug in the TV, it gives you a few more seconds to think about if that’s what you really want to be doing.

We all have such an input-overload right now. Take back a little peace and quiet.

Photo by *clairity*

My decision to not get organized for Christmas has been good so far. This is the first year in a really long time that my holiday success doesn’t feel measured by how many things I crossed off my to do list. When someone asks me if I’m ready for Christmas, it no longer has to mean “have I finished my shopping?”

Which incidentally, I haven’t yet, but I’m not worried.

My sleep schedule is messed up. Ten o’clock at night seems like the perfect time to repair the tile grout, at midnight I’m thinking about making soap, but at nine in the morning I can’t even concentrate to return an email. 

I realized today that since a cold front blew in and it gets dark so early, I haven’t seen the sun shine in a while. No wonder everything seems off. I’ll have to get outside this weekend. I hope it stays warm enough, I hate the cold.

I thought about posting some links for today, but I would rather just be quiet and put my computer away for now.

Thanks for reading.