It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

There's an article in the New York Times this weekend about Christmas stylists - decorators and designers who are brought in especially to make their clients' homes appropriately festive.

I had been drooling over all the Christmas images floating around the blogosphere - and I've been guilty of reposting some of them - but in the past week or so I've been getting increasingly frustrated with highly stylized photos of ideal Christmas interiors.  I mean, seriously; do you know anyone whose house looks like this at the moment?

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Or like this:

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I didn't think so.

Isn't the whole fun of Christmas decorating that you get to do it all yourself?  You make a lovely gorgeous mess of shedding pine needles and broken baubles and wrapping paper scraps flying all over the place, and you drape tinsel over every available surface and you have a wonderfully joyous time and then when you sit down to Christmas dinner at the end of the day - as we're about to do - you feel terribly satisfied that you did it all yourself.

Anyway, that's what I think.  I'm on an anti-stylization kick at the moment.  Indulge me!

our tree

presents wrapped and ready to go