WHO THE HECK IS DEBBY MUMM, AND WHY DO I HAVE HER DISHES?

Despite what Stewey might tell you, Chez Spinster is getting tarted up to within an inch of its life this year. (*) With grim determination, I have been heading out to the garage to open and then carefully inspect each and every one of my color-coordinated Target Holiday storage bins. If it doesn't come into the house...ka-blam! It goes to the Goodwill.

(I'm not kidding. I backed the car up and everything, and I even delivered a few loads while wearing my Santa hat and a festive grin.)

But I digress.....

In one of the Target Holiday storage bins (color-coordinated, don't you know), was a full set of Christmas dishes in its original packaging. From what I can tell, there is service for eight, along with a sugar/creamer set and a gravy boat.

While this might be a happy discovery for most people, I can only wonder as to the exact particulars of said dishes. When did I buy them? Why did I choose this particular pattern? Were they some crazy impulse buy that I threw into the Target shopping cart during some late night pre-holiday frenzy?

(I used to throw a BIG party each year on the first Saturday in December, and despite the fact that a few hundred people attended, I insisted that we use real glasses, plates, and cutlery. I think it was the second or third year when somebody clued me in to the fact that you can actually RENT these items, so there was no need whatsoever to frantically fish through a clearance bin for 475 matching napkins with embroidered reindeer on them.)

But back to the dishes.

I unpacked them and figured I might as well throw 'em into the dishwasher for good measure, and when Aunt Chrissy and Bosco come over for ham and scalloped potatoes this year we can have a semi-coordinated table. Woopie for me!

Thank you, from the bottom of my decorating-challenged little heart for all of your lovely comments about my tree. I took a good long look at it this morning while I was waiting for the refrigerator guy to get here, and I have to say that I am somehow quite tickled with the "whimsical askew-ed-ted-ness" of it all. So....until Stewey gets a job and earns enough money to hire David Tutera to come in and fix this place..."whimsical askew-ed-ted-ness" it shall be.

How's THAT for a holiday theme?

(*) Does anybody else find it totally nuts that Aunt Chrissy and I go to all of this trouble to decorate our houses so that the neighbors will think we're just normal little spinsters living happy little lives? You would think that the two of us hosted scores and scads of friends and relatives each year by the looks of all of the Christmas crap around here, but all of this festivity is so that we can stand in the street and sing "Joy To The World" in our best Clark Griswold voices when we finally get the lights to come on. (Aunt Chrissy does that every year, and every year it totally cracks me up.)

So that's the report for today, my dear stitchy friends! I hope that you have a wonderful weekend wherever you are and that your lights are shining brightly....