A Little Christmas

How is your holiday season going? 

I have to say, mine has probably been one of the hardest I have had.  Between work, the passing of my grandma, various Christmas parties, and finishing up phase 1 of a huge house renovation (and moving!!), there has been little time or means of getting into the holiday spirit.  Seeing everyone post pictures of their Christmas trees and brag about how they have finished their Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving leaves me thinking...

What's a girl gotta do to get a little Christmas around here!?

I'll tell you what she's gotta do!

She's gotta do what she's gotta do.

 

And that means:

1.) Shopping online at 3am.  - Amazon and Etsy, I just want to take this moment to say, I love you. 

2.) Listening to Christmas music as often as possible.  - Pandora, you're pretty great too.

3.) Decorating for Christmas before I've even moved one piece of furniture into my home. 

bare bones living room

And it was no easy task.  I had to move 5 chairs, 1 large tote, 6 boxes of varying sizes, 1 microwave, 1 toaster oven, and 7 trash cans (yep, 7! - don't ask why on earth we have 7 large trash cans in our basement). All of those things were piled in front of my Christmas decorations in the basement, but I was bound and determined to get to them!

So I lugged up 5 totes full of Christmas decorations (including the tree) from the basement to the living room and went wild.  And by wild I mean I set up the tree and put up two garlands.  I have no furniture in my home, but hey, I've got my Christmas tree up! It's really all about priorities at this point, people.  Nothing will stand in the way of this girl and her holiday spirit!  

I also put up our stockings on the mantel.  Michael and I started a stocking tradition the first Christmas after we were married.  We bought cheapo felt red stockings and had Michael's grandma embroider "Mr Blough" and "Mrs Blough" respectively.  Then we decided it would be fun to add something to the stockings every year.  So our 2nd married Christmas we added a new pin (I'd rather be smooching my nerdy/crafty husband/wife), and then another (related to our favorite foods - pop-tarts for him, popcorn for me), and another new one was added this year.

 

We thought it would be fun to start making the pins reflect something we did that year.  So this year, we added pins that we bought in Aruba to remember our family vacation last February.  We would really like to continue this tradition with our kids someday. 

So that's pretty much the extent of our holiday decorating thus far.  I look forward to next year when we will be more settled and I can go all out with Christmas... oh buddy!  That's the stuff that dreams are made of! 

Speaking of settling.  Look what is settling into our house!

  

 Our stuff! That's right.  We are finally unpacking! It feels so good!

I'll be back with an update on that some other evening because, right now, I got stuff to do!

Do you guys have Christmas traditions that you are enjoying this year?  How many totes of decorations do you have?