2012 - A GREAT Year
2012 - A GREAT Year
What is wrong with Stacy?
She didn’t even put up a TREE??!!!
At the end of 2011 I checked out for a little while. Sometimes, you just have to do that for yourself. I spend my days creating beautiful spaces for others and I looked around at my home that I have been in for three years and I decided that in the month of December, I was going to work on MY house. I buttered my great room walls with beautiful Charred Gold Lusterstone. Now they look luxurious. I worked on window treatments, cornices, and valances. I told my husband, please don’t buy my a thing...I just want window treatments up- help me put them up...That made me happy. Making progress on some personal projects gave me a satisfaction that I just can’t get anywhere else.
So I had a huge decorative finishing project going on in my living room. Christmas was getting close and I kept dreading the task of the tree. I kept asking myself why I was going to drag the 9 foot tree out of the attic . It was only going to get in my way. My son is an adult now and I wasn’t going to be entertaining this year with a project going on in the living room...so I decided that putting up a tree just seemed like a lot of extra work that I didn’t want to do. I announced to the family, “I am not putting up a tree this year!” No one seemed to care.
I never imagined the reactions that I would receive from people. Friends looked at me in horror! Grandmothers looked at me in disgust. The lady in the grocery store even made her feelings known. I have faithfully put up a tree for 20 years. My children had the whole Santa experience. Over and over again. Those days are gone. Why was it such a big deal? I didn’t feel like a Grinch, but others acted like I had completely forsaken Christmas. I suppose in a way I did. I feel so tired of the ridiculous commercialism of Christmas. If I want to give a gift during the year, I do. If I want something, I buy it. If my family needs, I give . I give my service to others anytime. Why do I run around year after year, looking to buy stuff that our friends and family probably don’t want or need? It’s ridiculous what our society has come to with the commercialization of a Holy Celebration. So we had a lean Christmas, not because there wasn’t money to buy gifts. We had a lean Christmas because we are so blessed that we wanted for nothing.
I ended the year tinkering with my home projects and it felt great. I made tamale’s to bring to the New Years Eve Party and the weather was a cool 53 degrees. I feel great delight in anticipation of the experiences of the New Year.
2012 is going to be an amazing year. I feel it.
Love,
Stacy
ADDENDUM To What’s wrong with Stacy?
August 8, 2012
So, I walk into my friend Angela’s house for our monthly Bunko night and my friend Charlotte is standing there with a Christmas Gift in a Trianglular box.
She locked eyes with me, staring at me, daring me to ask,
“Who’s the present for Charlotte?”
“It’s for you”, she said, “I don’t ever want you to be without again. Open it...Now”
Oh, I am loving this...
I open the gift and it is a
Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.
And then Charlotte shared with
everyone how it was a Sacrelege
that I did not have a tree.
So, to my friend, Charlotte....
I have my tree hanging in my
Painting Studio. Everyday,
I look at it and I know I will never
be Without.
Love Stacy
Tuesday, January 3, 2012