Christmas Touches in the Kitchen and Living Room

For the first time in my life I have discovered the worst best feeling to have. Yes, I typed that sentence how I meant it.

I am done shopping for Christmas. I’ve been done since December 12. I even wrapped all of the presents.

WHO AM I?!?!

I should feel amazing. I should be humble bragging right now. Maybe just flat out bragging, but I’m a mature adult, so I won’t do that.

I’ll blog about it instead.

Instead of relishing in the self-satisfaction that all of this forward-thinking and advanced prep work created, I. AM. FREAKING. OUT.

Not on the outside, of course, because I don’t do that. On the outside I am calm, cool and collected.

On the inside I am wondering how all you people who were done Christmas shopping in August can handle this feeling of ‘what did I forget and why was this year so easy?’

Tell me how you do it!

Seriously…I have plenty of time to listen and learn.

If I was to hypothesize why I’m on top of my holiday game this year as opposed to prior years, I would say it’s a reflection on this particular time in our lives. We’re living in a new place and don’t really know anyone, so our social obligations are less robust. I also cut out a lot of the holiday hubbub that didn’t bring me joy and come to find out, the world keeps turning! Imagine that.

So, that’s WHY it happened. Dealing with this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something is an entirely different matter.

All this extra time did free up some brain space to solve a most vexing dilemma. (It also gave me added time to type exaggerated sentences using the word vexing.)

Do you remember when I found a weird L-shaped piece of metal in my flowerbed last year? I asked for ideas on what to do with it and so many of you offered helpful suggestions.

I couldn’t make any of those suggestions work, so I just tucked the metal piece away and waited. I knew that eventually my brain would figure out a solution. It just has to chug along in the background and eventually it spits out a result.

Are you ready for this? It’s hard to tell, but the L-shaped piece of metal is holding up my wreath on the ladder below. It’s like that junky treasure was crafted especially for this job. Now that I figured this out, I’m excited to see what else I can hang from it after the holidays.

I made the simple wreath with clippings from our yard. Actually, it was from our neighbor’s yard, but if your tree is hanging over into my yard then I consider that portion a gift at wreath-making time and a curse at leaf-dropping time.

With neighbors like me, I can’t imagine why my social obligations are less than robust. Ha!

Now, this next picture is sure to be a real treat (again with the exaggeration) because I haven’t shared much of the kitchen in this house with you.

I’m not sure why because it is arguably the nicest and newest part of this particular home. The kitchen was remodeled about 4 years ago. It’s not necessarily my style, but I am definitely enjoying having space to move around in a kitchen again.