I’m so excited! Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the whole season. I love how everything glistens and shimmers, how everything smells so fresh with the scent of evergreen, how the hustle and bustle of the season starts the day after Thanksgiving. Though I sporadically will listen to Christmas carols throughout the year, they play 24-7 right through Christmas Day (and then some since I have I Heart Radio!) starting November 23rd.
In lieu of Black Friday shopping, I start a 4-day decorating spree. Four. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I started decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. The only thing we do the night of Thanksgiving at the very end of the day is to start taking boxes upstairs since that’s the part Mr. Wonderful helps me with. We take up all the empty fall boxes that the fall decor needs to go back into for storage and we bring up the boxes specifically for Christmas decor. The Christmas tree ornament boxes stay in storage until the house is decorated and boxes brought downstairs. I deocrate in two waves - the house and then the tree.
Why four days you ask? Well, I love Christmas! And I love to decorate my house for Christmas. Though I have just the right amount of decor throughout the other holidays and with my ‘regular’ decor, I tend to cover every flat surface possible at Christmas. Glitter explodes in my house! I’m not one for bling but, man o man, at Christmas? Watch out!
Since we bring the decor boxes up the night before, we put them directly in their appropriate room so I am all ready to go first thing in the morning. Oh, I need to mention that the decorating starts after I have Pumpkin Pie for breakfast. Yep, it’s a long-standing tradition with me. All the boxes are marked with a label stating which room they belong in. On many labels, I also notate what is inside the box (for example, a dining room box will have ‘hutch’ on it as well) which also makes set up easier.
Some rooms in my house are quicker and/or easier to decorate than others. I actually start with ‘low hanging fruit’ since I can knock out a lot of decorating and actually see progress.
For each room, I remove the current decor, dust it off, clean the space, then add the Christmas decor. The decor I removed either goes into the empty Christmas box if it going back up after the season (meaning it is part of my regular decor or I will be using it for winter decor) or it goes into the box marked specifically for fall. Did that make sense?
Once the first wave of decorating is done for the house and it’s all tidied up, next come all the Christmas ornament boxes. I’ll save that for another day.