That was me the past few days - a woman on a mission. I did something controversial. Hang on to your hats here, folks. I've always been the type of person who does NOT do ANYthing Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I always felt like it was a betrayal or something to Thanksgiving. That said, every December I find myself in the same struggle - running around like crazy the whole month of December trying to "get it all done," and seemingly always falling short of my expectations - ultimately disappointed by something that didn't get done. After a while, you gotta quit banging your head against the wall, you know? So -collective deep breath - I decided to get all my Christmas decorating done before leaving for MN for Thanksgiving. Except the tree. 'Cause we get a BIG live one, and need to be here continually to water it, so that's the one thing we'll do when we get home next week.
Determined to make my plan work, Thursday and Friday I holed up in the house and got it ALL done. And it looks awesome around here. It's the best feeling to know I can come home from MN to a fully decorated house, just enjoy doing our tree, and spending the rest of December actually relaxing and enjoying the Christmas season. And I've accepted it isn't a betrayal to Thanksgiving. We will still fully honor that holiday - and my thankfulness will continue all the way to the end of the year because I won't spend the next month scrambling. Who-hoo!!
Since most of you won't make it to our house during the Christmas season, I thought I would share some of my favorite Christmas things with you . . .
Starting out with our Dept. 56 Snow Village. I got many of these before the kids were even born and these pieces have been out of their boxes
once in the past 7 years. I've always been too pressed for time to mess with these - and they just sit in the storage room every Christmas. Not this year!! I had the best time setting these up - and the kids totally love them (see Halloween post).
Most of them have special meanings - these I just love because I have the outdoorsy thing going on in our family room . . .
This one is in honor of our weekly Sunday morning tradition of breakfast at the bagel shop before church:
The meaning behind this one should be obvious - it was a gift from Wells Fargo one year:
This one . . . well, Mark just likes soup.
Mark found this one and wanted it because his Dad used to work for Red Owl when Mark was little:
Okay, moving on . . . I LOVE this placemat - I've discovered there's all sorts of cute things you can do with placemats, not just eat on them - this one was like a buck at Target last year on clearance:
These are tin and covered in glitter - found them at the local museum store of all crazy places:
Some cute candlesticks from my mom:
A platter I found this year at my favorite local gift shop:
I call these my "Whoville" trees - they're all sparkly and glittery, hard to tell in the picture:
Here's my beaded penguin family - 4 of them, of course!
And yet another cute placemat that isn't being used as a placemat. Oh, and the trees are RED, not pink like the picture makes them look.
Now we have a really short 2-day week before heading to MN. I plan on spending a lot of time this trip relaxing and NOT dreading the rush of December. I love it when a plan comes together . . . .
1 comment:
Beautiful! I love it all!
(I'm almost finished too -- FINALLY!)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jen
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