Last night when the hubby got home from work the Christmas tree was illuminating our front window, supper was ready, the girls were peacefully coloring at the kitchen table (although they were teetering precariously at the great yawning edge of the abyss heretofore known as endless whining and bickering), and I was playing an Elvis Christmas CD. I felt like a vertitable modern day June Cleaver I tell you! He will never tell, but for a moment he just might have thought his family had been abducted by aliens.

The holidays can be a stressful time, with parties to attend, presents to wrap throw into last year’s gift bags, and mile-long to do lists to plow through. Here are some of my tips for saving time and stress:

Order your holiday cards this week if you haven’t already done so. I ordered 100 photo cards from Winkflash yesterday for less than $40! They are running a great special and the prices are cheaper than WalMart. (Savvy shopping mamas around the world swoon!)

Buy your holiday stamps online. That’s right. You can go directly to the U.S. Postal Service’s website, order stamps, and have them mailed to you. You might think this is silly, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to avoid one more trip to the post office this month. And it costs a whopping $1 for the convenience.

If you are really into convenience and you aren’t on a tight budget, Hallmark offers a service where they will address and ship your cards for you. I’ve never tried this, but one of my friends has. For a $1.25 per card, Hallmark will even have a staff member handwrite your personal greeting. They also have gorgeous photo card templates to choose from. Of course I think it might be odd to get a card with someone else’s handwriting, but this might be a great option if you have a very large number of cards to send.

I am no longer a mall rat, but if you have a day of power shopping planned at your local mall, take advantage of their gift wrapping service. Just be prepared to stand in line, although some malls will offer a drop-off option. I’m not a big fan of wrapping presents now that I have small children and must lock myself away at midnight in the bathroom in order to get any wrapping done, not to mention the fact that the first word that comes to the mind of Miss A when she sees a beautifully wrapped package is DESTROY!

Recycle your holiday gift bags from year to year. I think this is the third year the Sesame Street bag will appear under the tree. You’ve got to love Grover in a Santa hat.

Learn to say no. You don’t have to attend every event or party you are invited to, now do you Miss Paris Hilton?

Make a shopping list and stick with it. Your wallet will thank you. And honestly sit down and ask yourself if you can remember who gave you what for Christmas last year. Think about it.

Shop online and check out a website such as Current Codes for the latest discount codes for free shipping and other good deals. For out of town gifts, remember that Amazon will gift wrap and ship the item directly to to the recipient. If you’re super lame and forgot someone on your list or are completely out of time and resources, you can e-mail a gift card at literally the last minute.

Purchase a few inexpensive generic gifts, such as holiday candy or a pretty embroidered hand towel, for those impromptu holiday lunches. It’s good to keep a couple of bottles of wine on hand, too. The bonus is you can drink them if you don’t give them away.

Cook suppers with staying power. In the winter I like to make heartier meals that provide at least one night of leftovers. Last night I made this Southern Living skillet taco recipe and it was a big hit. I know my psyche is shoring up for a long winter when KFC commercials start to look appealing. (I am a fan of the original recipe variety as well as the mashed potatoes and gravy. Dang, that is some good sodium-laden shizzle.)

And one last thing, don’t forget that the holiday memories that will have the most impact on your children involve the gift of your time. Take the time to drive around your neighborhood to look at holiday lights (and the cynical among us adults can snicker at the neighbor with the gawdiest amount of inflatable lawn ornaments), put on a Bing Crosby CD and bake a batch of sugar cookies, and sit down to read a holiday book, talk about the true Christmas story, or watch a holiday DVD.

So, what are some of your holiday sanity savers? Add them to the comments!

p.s. Feeling the need to get the heck out of Dodge? One of the ads in rotation on my sidebar is for a five-night Tuscany getaway sponsored by PAM (complete with airfare and cooking lessons for two.) Check it out! 

The phone rings early Sunday.

Hubby and I are circling the coffeemaker like buzzards in a house that is unusually quiet except for the percolating.

The girls spent the night at my mom’s Saturday while we had a lovely steak dinner out with three other couples from our hometown that we’ve known a bazillion years. OK, more like twenty, which is still hard for me to believe. (Coincidentally today is the rerelease of U2’s Joshua Tree, which I listened to a bazillion times during that pivotal transition year from high school to college.)

I grab the phone and see it’s my dad. I assume he is on his way to church and calling to see if we want to meet at the Cracker Barrel, where we eat our weight in biscuits and hash brown casserole monthly.

Hi Daddy!

I realize my gravelly voice is suffering the effects of no caffeine and my mini martini tasting from the previous evening.

“Turn on channel 5! They’re interviewing a farmer about corn. It’s a crap vegetable! He won’t even feed it to his cows!”

Oh, the girls don’t even like corn.

“Doesn’t matter…anything made with corn. Corn, corn syrup, anything!”

Even tortilla chips? Even blue tortilla chips?

“Channel 5!”

“Corn!”

Click.

Updated to add: My mother-in-law says thanks to all of you for the prayers and positive thoughts!

My husband is on his way up now to see his mom. He has talked to her and his brother and things sound good. The surgeon said the tumor was no bigger than he thought and that the two lymph nodes they checked look good. My uncle came through his surgery fine, but his tumor was cancerous. Thank you for all the prayers and positive vibes. Keep ‘em coming if you’re so inclined!

Lately we have had more than the usual run-of-the-mill losing one’s keys, staying up all night with a sick kid, trying to identify the odd aroma coming from one of the dogs, running a small business stress at Casa Blonde Mom Blog.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed last Monday with breast cancer. This was a shock to all of us. It was discovered during a routine mammogram (ladies go forth and book your booby smashin’ now if you’re due!) She hasn’t had any symptoms and there is no history of breast cancer in her family. She did not feel any kind of lump during her self breast exams and neither did the doctors, but the suspicious area that showed up on her mammogram film was biopsied and the results came back as malignant. She is having surgery tomorrow to remove the tumor and will have six weeks of radiation. She reads my blog and I know she would appreciate your encouragement and kind words in the comments, as well as your prayers and positive thoughts.

And while the hotline to God is open, my uncle (my mother’s baby brother) is having surgery today to have a tumor removed from his kidney.

And also? My brother’s German Shepherd does have cancer.

What is that saying? When it rains, it pours.

Virgin Islands 1970, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Who is this mystery couple of international intrigue, circa 1970, and is it possible that this woman could have given birth to a fabulous baby girl (hint, hint) the previous summer?

Are they extras for a James Bond flick?

Speaking of extras, need any for the Osmond family reunion?

Can you tell I am having fun with my new printer slash scanner slash copier toy from Kodak?

(Which I plan on revealing more about next week during a big Thanksgiving giveaway!)

Oh, and 1971 called. I have your comforter and Yosemite Sam alarm clock.

p.s. Jess at Oh, the Joys wrote a lovely post recently about old family photos.

We took the girls for a Sunday afternoon drive in the country recently to the hubby’s grandmother’s farm. Although there weren’t yet any tomatoes, we came home with some fine homegrown squash and potatoes. Now Grandmother Jen passed away several years ago, but the farm is still in the family. It’s a bonafide Middle Tennessee with an old barn and an outhouse and a front porch with an worn wooden glider and a croquet set that the hubby remembers playing with as a boy. The old house sits empty, the flowerbeds are overgrown and the porch is quiet, but there is still homegrown goodness on the land. My father-in-law’s cousin plants a heck of a garden every spring and we usually drive up a few times every summer because the magnetic force of homegrown tomatoes is too great to resist.

We went on a squash hunt and Miss A insisted on running in between the rows of plants with a strand of purple beads in one hand and a pink Cinderella flip phone in the other because apparently she was expecting a very important call and she also needed to be able to accessorize with just a moment’s notice.

As we were leaving the garden, this old weathered chair caught my eye. I couldn’t really get a good shot of it unless I took a few steps on to someone else’s property. So I did. Some things just on the edge of your peripheral vision beg to be admired and photographed, even an old country chair.

My mother is building a beautiful new home less than 10 miles from us. I’m very excited as we will no longer have to trek up the interstate for a visit and the hubby and I can drop the girls off and go to dinner drinking on a whim!

Yesterday I took Amelia to daycare for a few hours while Caitlin and I ran errands. A Wal-Hell trip was on the agenda, and I figured I’d have a closer grip on sanity if I didn’t take both girls. I was proven right as later in the day I took both girls to the movie rental store and Amelia decided that she just wasn’t going to be bothered with the whole being buckled in her car seat thing. Good times.

Caitlin and I stopped by my mom’s new home to see the progress. Everything is falling into place nicely, and I especially love the kitchen. I know that’s puzzling as despite not being a great cook, I do love kitchens. Her cabinets ended up being more of a light tan than the antique white she was looking for, so she ordered a different shade of countertop–sort of a coppery, leather looking type finish.

Oh. My. Lord.

I took one look at those handsome, come hither countertops and it was all I could do to not run my hand lovingly down them and chain myself to a drawer pull. My first thought…”WOW, these would not show any dirt or fingerprints or coffee or red wine drips or yogurt flingage!” My imagination went wild with the possibilities!

We’ve been in our house six and a half years and our white on white on white kitchen (as in white cabinets, countertops, and appliances) is looking a little dingy. We didn’t have kids when we bought the house and I was just thrilled that it had been remodeled, as our house was built in the late 1960s. The white color scheme in our kitchen didn’t seem to be a problem back then, as our only kids at the time were our two dogs, Bailey and Jack, and I knew they wouldn’t be dancing on the countertops with their muddy paws any time soon.

Lately I’ve found myself with home wanderlust and looking at homes for sale online, even though we are at least a few years away from buying a new, or new to us, home. I’ve even taken to stalking homes in our neighborhood as they go up for sale, because the property value keeps going up, which bodes well for us if that trend continues. I’m going to try not to lust after my mother’s new home too much, but there’s something about the smell of paint fumes that is intoxicating. And as long as our house doesn’t know I’m cheating on it, I think I can get away with flirting behind its back.

The first stop on our Easter road show was lunch at my mother’s house followed by dinner at the hubby’s parents. My sister-in-law brought our nephew Connor, who is just 3 and a half weeks old. My brother-in-law stayed home with our 2-year-old nephew who was not feeling well.

The girls were completely enamored with their sleeping boy wonder cousin. He was curled up in his infant car seat carrier on the floor, sleeping peacefully under a blanket and occasionally grunting and squishing up his face as he concentrated on pooping while sleeping, which is a talent that babies have. I mean really, when else in life can you enjoy uninterrupted slumber while pooping? Once you have to walk to the toilet and wipe your own bottom the responsibilities and realities just start to mount and the next thing you know you’ve got a mortgage and Sears is mailing you warranty reminders on all your major appliances.

Any way the girls gathered at his feet. They were completely enthralled with him, especially Caitlin who was not shy about shushing Amelia and placing her hand over Amelia’s hand while she whispered instructions. “Don’t wake him up! Just touch his blanket! Don’t touch his face!”

Amelia got up and disappeared for a minute into the kitchen. I assumed she had grown tired of big sister bossing her around, but she came back bearing gifts for baby Connor. She started tossing packs of candy on him from her Easter basket while he slept. Despite all this girly showering of affection, he continued to sleep. Despite being pelted with fun size packs of M&Ms and Starburst candy by Amelia, he continued to sleep. Oh to sleep that soundly.

I bet he was dreaming of two pretty little girls, a blonde and brunette, sitting at his feet, watching him lovingly and showering him with candy. No wonder he was sleeping so well, sweet boy.