Cheerful Abundance

I have had the flu – the real, old-timey, why didn’t I get a flu shot, used to kill people style, capital-I Influenza. For the past 2 weeks, I was mostly confined to my bed, and there are whole days that are lost in a haze of drifting in and out of fever dreams.

Christmas wasn’t exactly the holiday I had planned, because of that flu,  but I am learning to shake off expectations, and just let it go. The kids were happy,and 30 years from now, they aren’t going to remember that we didn’t put up half the decorations, or make reindeer chow, but hopefully they will remember that there was a lot of laughing and I let them eat gingerbread cookies, for breakfast. It is tough, though – I have these glorious holiday ideas in my head; very specific visions of what makes the perfect Christmas. Ideas like, maybe I should start collecting Spode Christmas China, and then we can serve our Christmas dinner on this china, and it will become a lovely, cherished memory for the kids, this special holiday china, and 30 years from now, when my holiday table is expanded to include my childrens’ spouses and grandchildren, this china will be part of a set of treasured memories of every Christmas spent in my home. Clearly, marketing schemes work very well on me.

It is awfully cute. But then I catch myself thinking, well, it is a great idea, but where am I going to store it the other 364 days of the year? It isn’t like this house has a Butler’s Pantry, or a China Storage Room.  And how do you know where to stop, with Spode? I mean, they make everything in this pattern that you could possibly make out of china – hanging balls for the tree, salt and pepper shakers, large china Xmas trees that plug in and have blinking lights on them, cheese spreaders with china handles, highball glasses and dinner menu holders. I worry that once I start down this road, I will feel compelled to buy it all, and Spode is smart: they do limited edition patterns every year, special annual plates, and that kind of marketing really speaks to me. I also fear that, if I buy any of it, my friends and family will recognize it as my ‘thing’, that thing that I collect, and every present I ever get to the end of time will be something in the Spode Christmas pattern.

Clearly, it is a short path from a few pretty dinner plates to this monstrosity: the Spode Figural Deviled Egg Plate.

Internet, these are my first world problems.Should I buy Christmas China? This is what passes for a dilemma, in my fever haze. But I have this debate every year, when it goes on clearance after Christmas. Maybe this is the year. Maybe you are the horrible friend that is going to buy me that deviled egg plate. Hard to say.

Nineteen days to Christmas Eve, and this seems like the perfect time to think about Christmas Shopping. I am pretty obsessed with giving great gifts – gifts that make people laugh, and/or feel special, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to get it right. Do you? Maybe we should swap ideas. I’ll go first, but under a cut (which normally, I hate to do), so as to preserve the mystery, in case anyone I am buying for is reading this. Stop reading, family. Stop reading right now.

The rest of you? Keep going. (more…)

Of course it has been a year since I last blogged. What to say about that? Things happened. I read stuff. I thought about blogging. I got busy.

Let’s jump back in, shall we? Inspired by Suburban Matron, I decided to do a 25 days of Christmas relaunch of my site. Just me, banging away on this keyboard, Monday through Saturday, until Christmas. So you can assume that the past year will be filled in. I have a lot to tell you! I moved to suburbia, a task which involved looking at a lot of other people’s very poor design decisions, dirty kitchens, and shamefully dirty bathrooms. I have stories, my friends. So many stories! And yes, I know that isn’t technically 25 days, but people, I have little kids here, and I like my Sundays off with them.

But starting light. Did you hit the Neiman-Marcus/Target collaboration that debuted at Target today? I did, and because my Target is smack in the middle of a Hassidic neighborhood, items in these collaborative launches don’t fly off the shelves on Saturday, which meant that it was easy to score both the Tory Burch coffee flask and lunch box.

Did I need this? No. But how cute is this? Love the colours, love the colour combination. Also, on my sad little stipend, this is as close to Tory Burch as I am ever going to get.

Let’s pretend I am organized enough to pack my lunch every day, and will be using this. Truthfully, this little suitcase-like style may end up living in my office, holding post-it notes.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the rest. The Rodarte ornament wasn’t as pretty in person as it is online, and a lot of it didn’t seem that special to me. The Judith Leiber mirrors are adorable, but I already know what I look like: tired. I don’t need a cute mirror to show me that! I nabbed a second coffee flask, which will probably be someone’s Christmas gift. Not sure who, yet.

Well. That was a lot of opinions, wasn’t it? Since this is my first time blogging in a year, I better cut it short, before I start posting over-filtered instagram photos and moaning about the good old days of blogging. Tomorrow: let’s talk about all the houses I didn’t buy this summer, and why. I have photos. You really can’t imagine what happens behind the most innocuous of front doors. House-hunting shook my normally cheerful and stoic world view a little bit.

I could not eat another Buckeye, gingerbread cookie, or piece of candy cane if you paid me a million dollars. I adore the holidays, as only an atheist can, but there is this line where, suddenly, I need them to be over. I love seeing my house decorated for Xmas, but I also love the day we can take the decor down and pack it away. Everything looks a little cleaner that day, a little less cluttered, a little more spare.

Getting the holidays out of the way means I can get back to my true calling in life: stalking a very particular Michael Kors handbag on eBay. It was a limited edition bag last Christmas, and it turns out, was the most perfect bag in the history of handbags. big enough to carry a laptop and files without being ‘briefcase-y’, and perfect for carrying a folding potty seat and extra pairs of pants, without looking like a mom bag. I couldn’t justify the cost, the first time I saw it. Then, when I could justify it, the bag was nowhere to be found. The last sighting was on Zappos. But I decided to sleep on it, and in the morning, it was sold.

On eBay, similar bags show up. Quilted, but patent. Black, but not quilted. Gunmetal grey, not black, but quilted. A truly horrible denim version. A black, quilted version, but handbag sized. eBay is my Pequod, and I spend many sleepless nights on her, running random search terms. Maybe someone is listing it, but doesn’t know what it is called? Maybe the listing doesn’t mention that it is quilted? What search terms will bring it my way?

Mis-spellings on eBay are my secret weapon. My girls wear a lot of NWT “Hannah Anderson” stuff, bought at way lower auction prices than “Hanna Andersson” would be. But everyone knows how to spell “Kors”, it seems, and the bag is elusive. Also, I might be more than a little obsessed about this. But it is so pretty in person. And I have never seen anyone carrying it, which is a criteria for me. Save me from the ubiquitous Coach bag! Or the fake Chanel totes, which are all over the place here.

This entry has no ending. I lust after a handbag I can’t have. Poor me. Poor first-world problems me!