THE COZY LIFE AT THE LAKE

The weather outside is frightful but inside it's so....cozy! We are learning all about the weather up here in the north...relative to lake-effect snows. It can look like a blizzard on our street - and a mile away the sun can be shining with no snow at all. While Pat was in Atlanta for four days this week I schlepped out the Christmas acoutrement (dontcha love that word?) and decked the place. It is like walking a tightrope when you have boxes and tubs of 40+ years worth of accumulated chatchkies. It is easy to go overboard - Santas,elves,angels, tinsel etc on every squinch of space. I have a Santa face I made with the help of Womans Day Magazine when Fritz (now 40) was a babe. Let's say he hasn't weathered the years very well. His beard is dirty, his lips have faded, his wire glasses have been reformed every year...he looks - well, he looks old and bad. Not the Santa look you strive to display. But there he is, on the wall behind me!! Then there is the wax Santa who used to be a candle back in the old days. A holiday spent with Ryan whacking him on a tree in the yard, followed by lots of summers spent in the heat have left him in such a state that he could easily be collecting disability checks at the North Pole.
I guess we decorators-of-homes-at-Christmas all have trinkets and mementoes that our kids made back in The Days that we can't bear to get rid of - the clothespin reindeer, the lace doily angels, the clove oranges (those babies shrivel to the size of a walnut over several decades!). The simple fact is that these are the very things that make Christmas special every year! If the kids aren't here in person, all the memories help! The house is decorated. It looks - cozy - so I will flip on the electric fireplace, have some tea and feel the spirit! Hope you all are doing the same as the season rolls forward!