How we do holiday tradition at our house
Last night Liv comes to me and reminds me that it's December 1st and can we get the Advent calendar down.
Oh, crap. The Advent calendar! That damn Advent calendar will be the death of me, I swear. 25 little boxes, each waiting to hold a treat. It was easy enough to fill when she was little – some stickers, a bouncy ball, etc. But now that she's a tween, the 25 boxes taunt me.
Luckily I'd squirreled away enough treats to fill roughly half of the boxes so no emergency there. Yet. We'll talk about that in a week or two.
No, what I was worried about last night was the state of my house. Because only people with pretty houses have pretty Christmas traditions, right? She said Advent calendar, and I looked around my house at the piles of laundry, the tree boxes from the attic, the JUNK everywhere. We weren't READY for Christmas in our house. Our only hope of sorting ourselves out in time was to call in expert Household rubbish removals teams that are located not too far from here.
Because for the entire month of December, a warm glow is supposed to emanate from your house. Holiday cheer and warm hot cocoa and snuggling by the fire while reading a Christmas storybook. Yeeaaaaahhhh, right. Whose life is THAT? If you're anything like me, you will be too busy focusing on other things, such as trying to keep warm and what you are going to buy your relatives for Christmas? Both are particularly important areas if you ask me. Surprisingly, this year it has been easy to buy gifts for my loved ones, as they made the smart decision to tell us what they wanted. The idea of keeping warm, however, is neither here nor there. Though we do make sure to get regular furnace tune-ups, with somewhere like Summers Plumbing Heating & Cooling (www.summersphc.com/bloomington/services/heating/furnace-tune-up/) at intervals throughout the year, the cold weather that we experiencing outside means that it takes us a while to warm up. We do get warm, but I just wish we could take out the cold weather. But I guess this is what Christmas is about, after all.
Whilst it might seem difficult to achieve that glow around Christmas time, it's actually a lot easier for homeowners. By the time decorations are up, many people are normally feeling joyful and festive. However, to increase those feelings, some people might want to look into adding more bright lights into some rooms around the house. By looking for Neon Lights, homeowners could find some festive phrases to light up around the house. This would make the house feel warmer and more festive.
That should be the dream, after all. Being able to turn a house into a home is all about the decoration of your home. Ok - there are other things that can play a part, but if you don't enjoy every single element of your home, how can you feel comfortable? My friend had that problem not so long ago. She was fed up with her old home because every year at Christmas, she didn't feel excited for it because she didn't have the space to truly be able to celebrate the holiday in style. When she decided to look into these amazing mount pleasant homes for sale, it didn't take her or her real estate agent long to find a home that was perfect to host Christmas as well as making amazing memories with her children. Though stressful, this can be the beauty of moving into a new home. I hope she buys enough decorations to be able to transform her home into Santa's grotto. Even still, it will be a lot calmer than our home, for sure.
At our house it's running from activity to another – Girl Scouts and church play rehearsal and cookie party planning and teacher gifts. Oh yeah, and laundry and homework and cat puke, too. Christmas bites us on the ass every year. I'm he-e-e-ere.
But of course you can't just wait for perfect peace to do holiday stuff, or there would never BE any holiday stuff. So I got over myself and my little "I can't do it" panic, and we brought that Advent calendar down from the attic.
Tony cleaned off a small space on the bookshelf for the calendar while I rooted through my bags stashed in my studio to find the treats we could fill. Liv waited in her room until we told her it was done.
And you know what? It didn't matter that it was all rushed and last minute and that she could hear us scrambling to get it all together. She didn't feel the moment was ruined by the dining table piled chest deep in Girl Scout supplies and decorating projects. She pulled open that drawer and found some chocolate coins and a couple of hair bands, and was thrilled. And I was reminded that most of life's joys aren't found in the calm, perfectly planned times but in the spaces we carve out of the everyday hustle and bustle and chaos.
That's how we do holiday tradition at our house.