Yesterday we put up a snow tree. It was time for the Christmas decorations to come down and too early for the Valentines to go up. The dried agave stalk we've used for Christmas and other seasonal spirit for several years looked particularly bare on a cloudy, drizzly day after a colorful, rich holiday season.

Though we don't get much snow here, we're within an hour or so of several sledding hot spots, a ski area, and the tallest mountain in the state. We were hoping to go sledding this weekend, but it's raining. On a whim, we said, "Why don't we make a snow tree?" We strung icicle lights around the stalk, placed a few white silk flowers on its pod platforms and finished with a flurry of tissue paper snowflake folding and snipping.

Agave (aka century plant) grows wild here, and is architecturally beautiful by itself. We got one a few years ago from a neighbor who needed it cleared out of her landscape when it finished blooming.

This is why we live here, why we bought this home, and why we're paying it off early. So we can experience the environment. So we can make a snow tree. And feed the birds. (See the cardinal in the tree?)

We bought this home as a refuge and place of comfort and family. And beauty. Don't forget the beauty. So we can have friends over. So we can work in the yard and have a well-tended landscape. So we can chop wood for the stove. And throw the biggest Halloween party in town.

Of course you're on my mailing list, right? Email me and I'll send you a snowflake!

We didn't buy the house as an investment. We bought it to live in. Possibly retire in. Sure, we might like a little more space–wouldn't everyone? But we bought it because we love this place. We didn't buy it to live in till it appreciates enough that we can walk away with lottery-like-winnings. That's precisely why the house you live in is not an investment. It doesn't generate cash. And as recent occurrences prove, it doesn't always go up in value.

We used a technique I wrote about in "Let Your Mortgage Make You Rich!" of rotating our income and expenses through a home equity line of credit. In only our first two years of money cycling we knocked $70,000 off our mortgage! Do you know how huge that is? Why would we want to pay off the house early? Because we can save tens of thousands of dollars in interest by doing so. Since we didn't buy it as an investment, there's no need to "expense" all that interest. We didn't buy it for the tax deduction either. We bought it to live in. To love in. To play in.

We bought it so we could put up a snow tree.