{"id":4359,"date":"2011-12-28T06:50:24","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T11:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/?p=4359"},"modified":"2012-06-27T13:21:51","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T17:21:51","slug":"the-wild-side-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/the-wild-side-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Side of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editors Note: I realize it is “Wordless Wednesday,” but due to taking a week off of blogging for family visiting and the holidays, I had a lot of pent up words in me!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I am a pretty traditional person when it comes to Christmas \u2013 I have a homemade advent calendar that I made for my boys, I have BOXES and BOXES of ornaments, collectibles, and holiday baubles that have been passed on for generations. We have a favorite Christmas CD (Vanessa Williams), \u201cmust have\u201d cookies to bake, and a holiday marathon of watching A Christmas Story<\/em> over and over. When you have seven cats, tradition takes a back seat to common-sense and this year we have started a new tradition \u2013 we have embraced the \u201cwild side\u201d of Christmas compliments of my completely obvious obsession with my beloved Zoey who allowed my inner leopard lady to reign supreme!<\/p>\n

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My wild-child Zoey. She figures if I won't let her climb the tree currently in the house, she'll climb the one outside!<\/p><\/div>\n

It really was a practical decision in the beginning \u2013 we have a small faux tree that we take out each year that we beautifully decorate with shatterproof ornaments in your typical reds, greens, golds, and silvers. While it is not a real tree and the ornaments are not my family heirlooms, it is still pretty and I have made peace with the fact my cats are more important than my breakables. The house still manages to look festive and that is that. Until Dan and I went to Wal-Mart one night a couple of weeks ago and saw \u201cit.\u201d It went against everything I stood for in years past \u2013 a tall, white, fake giant of a tree and it was love at first sight for me.<\/p>\n

My mind instantly reeled and decorated this tree in full leopard regalia in my head! When we brought it home I proceeded as any rationale leopard obsessed human would \u2013 I spent an entire weekend decoupaging plain colored ornaments with a leopard tissue paper that I coincidentally already had and made them into unique, one-of-a-kind keepsakes. I made hand sewn ornaments in shapes of hearts, circles, and diamonds in a leopard print fabric I already also coincidentally had. We (Dan jumped in on this one) painted glitter on miniature letter \u201cZ\u2019s\u201d that I had found in a craft store and I also tied pretty leopard print bows on the tree boughs. Best of all, I even found a gorgeous butterfly in a leopard print to top the tree!\u00a0 It was a very different look for us, but somehow purr-fectly suitable for the life we now share with our cats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Our leopard tree was surrounded by presents, as we had a full house with family visiting from Boston, Upstate New York, and Florida<\/p><\/div>\n

I was a bit worried when the kids (even in their 20\u2019s, they will always be our kids) arrived. Would they be upset at the new tradition? Turns out they had already known long ago that I had gone off the deep end, so it all seemed 100% normal to them and they loved it!! As the below picture will attest to, it really is all about family and the memories that are created\u2026.<\/p>\n

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By nights end, clearly it was evident no one was concerned with what color tree we had! Everyone is completely relaxed and happy! You will note Harley to the left, moving clockwise is my youngest son, Joe, then my step-daughter Crystal on the couch, and my oldest son, Chris, with Peanut on the far right of the couch!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editors Note: I realize it is “Wordless Wednesday,” but due to taking a week off of blogging for family visiting and the holidays, I had a lot of pent up words in me! I am a pretty traditional person when it comes to Christmas \u2013 I have a homemade advent calendar that I made for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1100],"tags":[1265,223,66,205,26],"class_list":["post-4359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordless-wednesday","tag-cats","tag-christmas","tag-family-2","tag-holidays","tag-wordless-wednesday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4359"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6142,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions\/6142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}