Back with more cheer.

As promised, I'm back with more cheer. I've felt so awful all week and finally feel like I'm on the mend.

But first, a quick breakdown of the 4 days of awfulness to purge it from my system:
Day 1:
Had an awful sore throat and tongue/fever/headache/body aches.
Went on antibiotics.
Had a crappy family crisis.
Day 2:
Antibiotics caused major body rash/face hives/dizziness/stomach cramps.
Stayed in bed. Cried a lot.
Day 3:
Stopped taking antibiotics and took benadryl.
Felt worse.
Fever/hives/disorientation (got lost going the 15 feet from my bed to the bathroom)/hallucination (for the record there is not a cricket or anything else in my womb).
Stayed in bed. Cried a lot.
Day 4:
Took no more benadryl or antibiotics.
Dizziness and disorientation lessened/hives began to subside.
My period arrived with a bang!
Excruciating cramps/back pain/nausea.
Family crisis is being handled better.

Officially, 4 days of hell. There's got to be a whole lot of happy on the other side of this for me.

I am now off the crazy-making meds and trying not to o.d. on ibuprofen for the cramps. Hubs cleaned the house, grocery shopping is done, laundry is going. And I finally started decorating my Christmas tree.

Without much further ado - here's some happy:

Since it's our first Christmas, we don't really have any ornaments or Christmas decor. Since I really like the idea of crafts but never have the time or the talent to pull most of them off, I nearly went out and bought a bunch of ornaments. The problem is, I don't like most ornaments. Glass balls hold no meaning for me. I think tinsel is the worst substance on the planet. I live in the desert and grew up in Florida so snow and snow related things don't hold any special place in my heart. When discussing the traditions we want to create, Grit and I agreed that we want to try to make everything we do around Christmas time mean something - tree ornaments included. The tree we had growing up was always a wild amalgamation of old and new, handmade and purchased. We all had special feelings about the things we'd made and hung on the tree. Stars made from popsicle sticks and yarn, snowflakes fashioned from glue and glitter, the carefully packaged fragile keepsakes that my mother hung up high. Since decorating the tree was a wonderfully chaotic group effort, the decorations were probably mostly clustered in clumps near the bottom and my wise parents always secured our tree to the wall using fishing line. When I saw the perfectly coordinated trees that others had, I thought they were pretty but felt no connection to them. I was always in awe of our tree each year. It was always perfect to me. We'd turn off all of the lights except those on the tree and sit together singing carols or just contemplating. My husband told me he never much cared for decorating the tree because he knew his mother was just going to change everything they'd done anyway. Her tree was coordinated and had to look "just so." He doesn't want to carry on that tradition. Me either.

We really wanted to do something with our tree that represented our year. I thought about knitting some wedding themed ornament but couldn't find anything that didn't look like super cheesy crap. (Side note: Why do people act like crap is a swear word? Honestly? That's weird.)

Any-who, After looking around our little place, I decided that I really wanted to use some of the seashells left over from our wedding decorations to hang on the tree. I was sure they'd have a lot of natural holes since the ones I collected at the beach always did. No such luck. I decided to try Grit's drill with the smallest bit he had. We found that by going slowly, we could get through most of the shells. After some trial and error, a couple of broken shells and one broken drill bit (sorry babe), we have a nice collection of seashells hanging on our tree. So far it's just lights and shells until we come up with something more. We're also going to wrap the base of our tree with some of the turquoise burlap we used as table runners at the wedding since most tree skirts make me gag. So we actually do have a themed tree, but WE are the theme. It's not perfect and it doesn't need to be. It's perfect for us!

Photos to come.