The Christmas season snuck up on me this year. I’ve never been on the Outer Banks through the fall and winter before, so even though I know it’s December, I’m just not used to preparing for Christmas in this environment!
When I was growing up, I always loved when my family would break out the boxes of Christmas decorations after Thanksgiving and give our whole house a festive makeover, inside and out. Even though I’ll be going home and spending Christmas with my family, I wanted to do something to mark my first Christmas as an official grown up after graduating from college! The problem with trying to design, acquire, and assemble a solid arsenal of Christmas decs (six months after graduation, I still can’t shake the RA lingo of saying “decs” instead of “decorations”) is that I really have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing for the next few holiday seasons. I want to go back to grad school and am really not picky about geographic location, and I’d also like to travel for work or fun, depending on the next job I find. The point is, it doesn’t really make sense for me to go out and buy a bunch of stuff that I’ll have to find somewhere to store for the next eleven months and might not even fit or go in the next place I live.
But I love Christmas! You see my conundrum. I finally decided that it made the most sense to get just a few random accoutrements (French… classy) to give our house a little festive cheer without ending up with boxes and boxes of stuff to store come January. Unfortunately, I don’t have a collection of charmingly old and traditional family decorations, because I am in fact rather young and have only just recently left the nest. Therefore, the official first installment in my own personal Christmas decs collection consisted of the following: a couple strands of $5 Christmas lights, a cardboard ornament from the dollar store, a goofy tinsel garland from Kmart, and cheap matching stockings for Sarah, Irie, and me. Hey, I’m on a budget. They’re cute, but don’t quite conjure up the magical holiday comfort I was looking for. But then something happened.
A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.
Here I was, sitting at home and minding my own business (actually watching the latest episode of Dexter and freaking out), when Maria pulled into my driveway and unloaded this magical Christmas box! Her big ol’ Trooper might has well have been Santa’s sleigh. I have not even fully dug into it yet because a) I didn’t want to ruin the surprise of the contents before I put them up and b) I was too busy jumping around excitedly, but I can tell you that they are charming and traditional!!
I’ll be back in a few days with a blog update and a fully decorated house – I’m getting’ my Christmas spirit on, y’all!
P.S. Ice cream maker update!! We made non-dairy ginger ice cream. How hippie-dippy of us, right? When I say we made it, I mean Sarah made it and I came home from work and ate half of it. It was phenomenal.
