I May Need an Intervention

Today I'm giving thanks for:

• The luxury of a leisurely dinner with candlelight and flowers and cloth napkins for no reason other than-it's Wednesday and we can.

{The glow-in-the-dark liquid in Tom's glass is Crystal Light...we're not that fancy.}

• The December magazines have started to arrive in grocery store check-out lines - hurrah! I devour holiday decorating, shopping, dressing, and cooking ideas at such a rate that I seem to find it necessary to buy the December issue of everything from Vogue and In Style to Cooking Light and Field and Stream. Ok, maybe not Field and Stream... Although a quick glance at their website reveals that they too have jumped on the holiday bandwagon with a special feature entitled "Great Gifts for the Gun Dogger." I'd tell you what a "gun dogger" is, but the photos of unkempt men posing gleefully with Bambi's mom's corpse were starting to rain on my holiday mood parade, so I had to click quickly away.

{Why, hello, Martha.}

•  Something about this time of year fills me with inspiration and a misplaced confidence in my crafting abilities. Right about now I am feeling fully capable of sending beautiful packages of homemade treats and handmade cards to all of my friends and family. I just need the appropriate crafty tools! Thankfully, Martha offers so much more than a magazine-she has everything I need to become a goddess of holiday cheer! The woman has built an empire around her unique ability to make the average woman feel like if she just had Martha's snowflake punch, she could make a beautiful snowflake garland to adorn the windows and then Christmas will be perfect and Tiny Tim will walk again and...world peace! Wait a minute...why am I thankful for this? Whatever. For the moment, I am going to choose to ignore Martha's mind games and plans to battle Oprah for world domination and just be happy about my new snowflake punch.

{One cheer-making, cripple-saving snowflake garland coming up!}

{Martha may have also convinced me that I should have the ability to make perfect circle cut-outs at a moment's notice.}

{It's about to get real crafty up in here.}