Seems Like It Can't Be...

...but it can!

Certainly the P*ttery B@rn catalog told me so when it came today to mock my house. And every year since I found it, I've been trying to follow the original Holiday Grand Plan, with varied amounts of success. Frankly, I need this much time to get my house ready for the crap festive decorations that come with the holiday. I joined the Yahoo group and everything. But I can't relate to most of the people on that site, who have been canning homegrown fruits and vegetables all summer with little circles of last winter's after-Christmas-clearance fabric tied with neat ribbons on top. Please don't get me wrong. I admire them from the bottom of my heart. But this is not me. Not in this lifetime so far.

So, thanks to OrgJunkie, who had a list today of Christmas prep sites, including this one. (Blog button to come--one a different note, anyone else having issues with Blogger? This weekend, I couldn't add images. Today, it won't let me edit my layout. What gives?) OrgJunkie's post also inadvertently gave me the idea I was looking for for the "group gifts" we now give to all the families of my husband's sisters. (Phew! Not that I've been fretting about this for nine months, since Girlfriend, my almost-SIL, told me she finished everybody's for this year in the after-Christmas sale last year.) So already I feel helped along in my quest for the perfect holiday. By which I mean low-key and unfrantic. I don't need someone to create chores for me ("Today, change all your switchplates to the Christmas themed ones!") or encourage not-really-cute stuff (Reindeer poop as a "cute" idea? That sounds worse than coal to me but I don't have much of a sense of potty humor, I admit.) because it's easy and cheap. I need someone to say, "You know, if you want to do advent calendars, look now, because they'll sell out before the first. At least the ones with the chocolate will." So we'll see how this journey goes. In some ways, it's not starting well; I'm not a notebook kind of girl, despite the solemn assurances that it's the way to Get Organized for Christmas, so I'm not doing today's "get your gear" stuff. But I will set a timer for 10 minutes to start clearing out stuff in the living room (consolidating plants, switching out summery stuff for fall-ish stuff) to acknowledge that it's September. You know, before it's December 24 again and we're flying down Route 13 looking for a Christmas tree lot that's still open. (Not that we'd ever do that. Nope, never heard the Christmas Vigil church bells calling the faithful while we are buying the tree. Not us. Have to look somewhere else.)

Happy 100 Days to go, everyone!