Decor Dilemma

It's been over a year since we've been in our house now. Yay! We love it and our neighborhood and our ward (and living in this climate this time of year). One thing we don't love though is deciding what to hang on our walls. Yes, folks, it's been a year and a good number of our walls are still bare. This is not due to the fact that we have nothing to put on them. In fact, the opposite is true. We have too much to put on them, and frankly, we don't know what to put where, or what to do with some of the very thoughtful and / or time-consuming and / or expensive wall decor we have been given over the years that is just not our...um...taste. Every time we go to tackle actually hanging things on our wall we end up going through our vast supply of decor and just putting it back in the same closet, with maybe one more thing hung up.

The problem is we watch too much HGTV, I think. We've become quite picky about what we actually want in our house. However, we also don't want to be ungrateful for all the things others have provided for us. Why should we waste or spend extra money on even more decor when we already have plenty? There are impoverished people all over the world and I want to complain that some very thoughtful gifts just aren't my style so I feel justified spending more money to get what I really want? This is what we go through every time. We feel like we should hang all this stuff up, yet we don't get excited about a lot of it, so we just give up all together and our walls remain bare.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this dilemma? (BTW, if you are reading this, it's not likely you have given us anything we don't want to hang up. Some gifts from non-readers are the biggest culprits here). Do we just not worry about hanging up things people have spent a lot of time and money on and get what we want? Do we get over our vanity and be grateful for the generosity of so many people that allow us to decorate our home w/o us breaking the bank? Seriously, it's such a ridiculous thing, but I feel like our home still feels unfinished and I am really ready for it to be finished, so how do we deal with this?

What Says "Merry Christmas" Better?

Isn't he adorable?

Proud Mama

I haven't done much blog reading or writing recently. It is just too busy this time of the year, but I am pausing this regularly scheduled holiday busyness to relate what just happened that made me so proud. It will show just how much of a nerd I am.

One show I actually really like Adie watching is Little Einsteins. We have it on On Demand, so there are 4 or 5 episodes she can watch at a time and they switch a couple out every month or so. If you haven't seen Little Einsteins, and there are probably a good number of you who haven't, you should know the basic premise is each episode is built around a particular piece of art (or art type), a piece of classical music and a geographical location, or sometimes multiple locations. I love Adie learning about art, music and geography. I know, I'm weird. Anyway, a couple of episodes that are no longer on On Demand featured "The William Tell Overture" by Rossini.

Fast forward to today...as I was changing Chase's diaper, I was humming "William Tell" (If you don't know what it is by name, look it up on YouTube or something and give it a quick listen. I promise you, you've heard it.). Adie says, "Hey, Little Einsteins!" I then ask her who the composer of the song is and she pauses for a moment to think and then says, "Rossini." Yes! My daughter is learning to distinguish classical music. I was so excited. I then ask her what the name of the song is. She needed a little prompting but was able to tell me that too. Then, about a minute later, she says, "Overture is all gone," because those episodes are no longer On Demand and she recognized that. I'm not claiming Adie's a brainiac since she seems to a little slower on that curve than some kids, but I am just happy she has taken to music so much.

My second musical brainwashing ploy is a success! Now, Adie not only loves the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but she has an ear for classical music ;) I think maybe Santa will need to bring a Little Einsteins DVD to her.

Trip planning tool

So I discovered this tool which I think is pretty cool. Often times (especially in winter) you care about the weather along the path you're traveling in addition to the weather at the start and at the end of your drive. The problem is, if you want to know what the weather will be like, you need to look at the start and end of your trip and then maybe 2 or 3 spots along the way. It's a pain. Anyway, I found a tool at the weather underground that will show you the weather along your travel path based upon your expected departure and arrival times. It will also give you directions. The tool is at: http://www.wunderground.com/roadtrip .

Wonderful wife

So every once in a while your wife does something so unexpected that you just have to comment on it.

The other night, we were watching Star Trek, The Next Generation's final episode. I tend to watch frequently and Sabrina will occasionally watch as she does other things. We were talking about it for a couple minutes after the show ended and she turned and said "Does Netflix have Star Trek? I think we should get it and watch the entire series from beginning to end in order."

Frankly, I was dumbfounded. This sort of comment was so unexpected as to leave me momentarily speechless. I quickly recovered, and assured her if she were willing to watch, I could find all the episodes. Yea, I admit to being a bit of a nerd. But I have a wonderful wife (even if she's a bit of a nerd too).

Worth the Read

My friend sent me this article yesterday and it's really worth the read. I especially liked this quote:

"We are a nation of hyper-consumers. We encourage our children to major in consumption and minor in frugality!"

This is a topic Brett and I discuss a lot. We'd like to not be hyper-consumers but it seems there is always something "worth buying" and it's hard to just be content with what we have at present. We try to be somewhat frugal and, at least, informed consumers, but I still feel our house is too full of stuff. How do we simplify? Any good ideas?

Christmas decorating

This is really the first year we've had time to prepare for Christmas "away from home". We no longer have ready access to borrowing a Christmas tree from family. I've been quite excited to get us a nice big Christmas tree of our own. We also have a home with 9' ceilings. As such, I wanted to get the tallest tree possible that would still fit in our space. That means an 8.5' tree. Do you know how hard it is to find that size of tree? They do exist, but it's next to impossible to find one anywhere in a store.

One of the things I'm also amazed at is how expensive Christmas trees can be. Sabrina has been kind and said I could spend a couple hundred on a tree. However, I have come to find out that trees tend to start around a couple hundred dollars and go up from there. I found many that cost over $1000. I'm sure they're wonderful, but that's a lot of money for something that I'll only use 1.5 months a year and that will take up lots of space in my garage otherwise. Anyway, it's looking like I'll have to have a sight unseen purchase off Costco.com. Fortunately Costco is great at taking stuff back. Guess that's why I shop there so much.