Two Left!

Two sessions left for delivery (and only because one had a lab mix up!)  Well over 2,000 cards completed (not too shabby considering the average client card order was for 125ish cards)!  Now I’m waiting on the finale of holiday cards, our own!  This year Marmalade Photography is teaming up with the Drenthe Family card so be on the lookout for our Holiday card arriving to clients, friends & family in the coming week JUST in the nick of time!  Much like my shopping.  Also perhaps a surprise or two is in store….check back to the blog during this, the final week before Christmas for more awesomeness (I need to channel my inner Barney once in awhile).

I was really late in getting the house decked (or is it getting my halls decked?).   In the past we have always gone to the tree farm and lumberjacked ourselves a tree but this year it wasn’t to be.  With having gone to Florida for five days and rushing RUSHING to get all the client orders to them in a more than timely manner somehow our never failing family tradition well…failed.  :(  No worries, I finally got my mitts on a pre lit tree that I can put up, slam bam!  So altho I didn’t particularly want a faux tree, somehow one made it into our lives this holiday season.

Once I got all my Radko ornaments on the main tree in our living room (coupled with an assortment of handmade ornaments courtesy of the little Marmalades), turned on the lights…I almost forgot that I don’t have a live tree (and I definitely like not having to pick up pine needles on a daily basis!).   Last year we became one of those people with two trees, one sits in our foyer, it’s very very narrow and it’s studded with all my pretty ornaments, no kid stuff.  The family tree is the messy more family oriented tree.  :)  I had to get a tree to satisfy my inner Martha (who has been sadly silenced in the past few years by my inner Ansel Adams), thus the foyer tree tradition was born.  This year the foyer tree sports an assortment of crystal ornaments, iridescent ornaments and silvery-white ornaments in the shapes of stars & snowflakes (mostly).  I love my foyer tree so much, yet surprisingly so, I got really excited to decorate the family tree and drag out all the memory laden family stuff.  I love nostalgia and looking @ Maddie’s ornaments from preschool and kindergarten and reliving Lauren’s just passed us by faster than you could say ‘whoa’ preschool days.  They grow SO quickly.

I love this time of year and although I haven’t been able to fully enjoy it as in years past I am finding a happy medium of happiness (redundant much?).  I do vow that the new year will bring some much needed help & sanity to Marmaland.

(as a sidenote, some goof from the UK is harassing me a bit about use of Marmaland as a word.  Apparently he is a curator for the Museum of Marmalade and dresses up in superhero costumes denouncing some weirdness with evil lemon curds.  I so totally *know* I sound like I fell down the rabbit hole right now but I swear there is no recreational drug usage going on!  I would approve the blog comments if I thought anyone would understand the behind the scenes weirdness that I’m dealing with but we’re all much better off not really knowing.  FWIW, this is his site:   Marmaland  (please check out the July-ish entries in his blog which you can access at the top of his page) and you will understand if from this point forward I will continue using “Marmaland” just to make the superhero man in tights bristle a bit.  So Marmalord, if you’re reading this I’m here to tell you Marmalade and Marmaland has been mine since 2005!  A full year before you got costumed up to preach the virtues of Paddington’s former favorite love (and yeah, I agree, Marmite is a poor substitute!)).  Sothere!  Nahnahnahnah nah nah.

Ugh, sorry, I sort of fell down and relived my inner child brat.  Marmalord, you’ll just have to get over yourself.  🙂

 Now, try to dispel the thoughts of dancing men in orange tights out of your head before bedtime.

Bet you can’t!

Til next time, xoxo,

Mare (from MARMALAND) 😉