Christmas Cards and other Catastrophes

I don’t know how everyone else greets the holiday season but around here we like to do a little thing I call “prepping for the Christmas card.”

Well, to be perfectly fair, one of us really likes to prep for the Christmas card, one of us likes to drink heavily in preparation of prepping for the Christmas card, two of us like to gobble up dog treats in anticipation of being forced into outfits for the Christmas card, and one of us spends a lot of the evening meowing angrily and trying to disrupt the preparation of the Christmas card.

I’ll let the pictures help you all figure which is which.

This year’s card idea actually came about last Christmas when my brother's family got Opie a “make your own ugly Christmas sweater kit.” I put it away until this year then got myself one because, honestly, perfect theme for a Christmas card.

In any case, the creative process started off calmly:  just a couple of crazy kids cutting felt and gluing puffballs.

Then, as the alcohol and dog treats flowed, our conversations went a little something like this:

“Is that my green puff?  You can’t have my green puff!  I need the puff! Wait, where did we get pipe cleaner snowflakes?”

“I can’t work like this, I can’t work with a cat in my face!”

“How come we only have one string of horrible gold beads?”

“How cute is that?  Prince is helping…"

"Wait! Stop him! Get him off the table right now!” followed by “Instead of taking pictures and yelling at me to get the cat off the table why don’t you just get him of the table?!” (Which just goes to show you that Opie has no clue about the importance of photographic documentation of big life events).

“Are we seriously out of beer?” followed by “Oh crap, I think I put some in the freezer for you so they'd be really cold…like 3 hours ago.” followed by “Well, that’s a disgusting mess…yes, we’re out of beer.” soon followed by “Don’t be ridiculous, we’re never out of vodka.”

“You did NOT get Bubba another sweater….stop saying he loves it, look at him, he clearly doesn’t love it!”  (Which just goes to show you that Opie doesn’t understand that Bubba limping around, pretending to have a sore paw is just his canine way of saying “clothes are so awesome!”)

“How many treats have you given those animals…oh my gosh, that cat wants to kill you right now.”

  

“A Cyclops snowman? What the hell is a Cyclops snowman? Did you do that on purpose or did you aim for one side and miss?”

“I can’t believe they call this sweater a medium—in what universe is this thing a medium?  I look enormous.  Don’t you think I look enormous?” followed by “I look FINE?  Is that what you just said?  For future reference, when I say ‘don’t you think I look enormous?’ the correct answer is ‘no, you’re as skinny as a supermodel—did you just LAUGH?"

In any case, we finished the sweaters without killing each other, the Christmas cards are created and ordered, and if you think Prince hated his sweater, check out his reaction to his new hat:

Brace yourselves, folks, I have the feeling it's going to be a loooonnnnggg holiday season!