Picture this, if you will...

I'd give my eye teeth to have pictures to go with this post. I'm sure I have some stored up somewhere, but that was before the digital age. And though I'm willing to search my Shutterfly account for old photos, I'm absolutely not gonna go digging through a stack of boxes for a picture I can't even be sure exists anymore.

In my mind, however, I can see everything clearly. There's the dining room table set for twelve (extended with a card table, but covered with one giant Christmasy table cloth and matching cloth napkins). Mulled wine simmers in the crock pot; the Blue Willow teacups are waiting to be filled. Curt is cooking because it was just safer that way. 

This was a tradition back at 618 Walnut where we lived till Benjy was born, not long enough. Every December we hosted our own Old Southwest Christmas Parlor Tour dinner. We invited friends and told them to dress warmly and be ready for walking. And then we'd feed them, fill their flasks, and be off. The tour is, to this day, an annual fundraiser for the historic district neighborhood we called home. Roughly 10 homes were on the tour every year, and we'd traipse through each of them ogling their decorations and wood trim and original windows and impossible kitchens. Every house smelled of Christmas - all cinnamony and apply and sprucey. Candles floated in bathtubs. Fresh greens stretched from room to room. And polite oversee-ers stood in every room keeping watch.

And then we'd turn into the last room and tumble out the door, whisk our flasks of mulled wine out of our pockets, and sneak a sip before heading to the next house. The entire tour took about 3 hours. And by the time we got home, we were convinced we had the shabbiest house in the city. Our fake greenery and aged decorations surely wouldn't attract a rat, much less a $10 ticket. 

What I know now, almost 10 years later, is that my aged decorations look just as good in the dim light as the ones I saw on the Parlor Tour. And I can float candles in water as well as anyone. But I don't think it's the decorations that make the house, in fact, as much as the love that fills it. Whether the houses we paid to see were filled with love of family or love of the season or love of kitchens, each and every one had somebody filled with a love of something fixin' them up for the rest of us. 

This teeny-tiny house we live in now has tons of that love. So much love we're a muffin-top kind of home. We love each other fiercely. We love the anticipation of the season. We love the Christmas lights  shining in every room. We love the good smell of Glade candles that masks Ein's litter box. The bottom line is, we love. 

One day, with God's blessing, we will make it home, and we'll resume our Christmas Parlor Tour dinner parties. But until that day, we'll happily count our blessings that we've found the real beauty of a parlor tour in our own living room of our rented 1950s Cape that's just right for us. If you want a tour, we promise not to charge you.