It's begining to look a lot like Christmas...

Today was a glorious day!  Full of sun and no rain (well for quite a bit of it) and I felt this energy to get everything done before this brief respite left us.  Our house has an amazing front porch...It is probably one of my favorite things about the house (besides my glorious gas range).  It has always been my dream to create a space that invites people to sit, to relax, to connect.  A space that I want to sit under while listening to the rain, or read a book, one where people stop to say hi.  When we first bought the house we didn't have anything but camp chairs to start and while in my head I envisioned a garland laden space ala Martha Stewart we had a shoe string budget last year and made due with cheap looking dollar tree crap.  Thankfully two things happened

1)One of my friend's parents had a extra set of wicker furniture they no longer wanted

2) All Christmas stuff was 90% off last January...

It was so exciting today to pull stuff out of our basement (aka the cave of no return) that I had bought, what seems like a million years ago, and start to decorate....to have neighbors walk by and instantly see that they too were infected with the holiday bug!  To see the difference in the place from just one year ago. I have been working on "simplifying" my life so having 8 tubs full of Christmas decorations seems pretty ridiculous...but for me it is so much more than a ridiculous fake village, more light strands then you can count (or unwind)...


Christmas was always a HUGE thing in my family.....it wasn't about the gifts, it was about something magical/bigger then the everyday.  My mom is a crafter, an amazing person who can see what someone else has made go right into Jo'Ann's with her 40% coupon and create it exactly, if not better for pennies on the dollar.  Growing up our home was decorated very "country" with knick-nack shelves and such.  It was always so exciting for us the friday after Thanksgiving to have my dad pull out of our attic box by box alllll the decorations for the upcoming holiday.  We would replace every little decoration with something Christmas. 
 No matter that we didn't have a lot of money it always looks like a million bucks to me....looking back I don't know if its because my mom had spent so many hours creating every item or if it was the pride she felt (well we all did) when people would walk into our home and instantly smiled.  It was a place where people wanted to be, a place that oozed love and excitement!   

It wasn't just the decorating it was also all the time spent making/creating/baking.  The little things my parents would do that made it seem like Christmas was a time anything was possible, that everyone was special and loved. We always heated our home with our fireplace and yet we would have one cold night every Christmas because we didn't want Santa to be burned!  That the cookies we left would magically be all eaten and even my dad would accuse Santa of drinking a beer. I remember one year "Santa" had brought us a big trampoline....as a kid I was amazed at how the sled could pull such a thing and much, much later I found out that my dad and his best friend had spent HOURS that night (which it was freezing rain and icy mind you) trying to put the thing together in the dark....my love and appreciation for all the "behind the scenes" stuff has only increased as I get older that is for sure.

While my parents sacrificed to make sure we got great gifts it was so much more....it was a time where there was happiness and hope. 

We don't have any kids so spending 8 hours decorating a house can seem a bit absurd.  But I will tell you driving home tonight I felt a brief glimmer of that feeling I used to get...one of love, total safety and excitement when we got closer to our house.  I felt totally humbled for a second at how blessed we are to have such a great house.  A home that we can decorate, one that we are slowly creating together, a place that people feel fine just showing up unannounced.  I am excited for the future memories as well.  I don't know what it is about this time of year but I can't help but smile and be thankful.   

Lacy