The festive month

I am in a much better place mentally this year than I was at this time last year. I feel much more creative (though this sadly doesn’t extend to writing outside of work) and enthusiastic about the holiday season. Everything has fallen into place for me this year, which has made all the difference.

So, here we are. December. Christmas is three weeks away. Most of my shopping is done, and I’m really pleased with the gifts I got everyone this year. I even made some gifts, which I will share here after the holiday. Honestly really proud of the gifts I made because I didn’t consider myself to be super talented in arts and crafts. But these gifts exceeded my expectations, plus I am enjoying making them.

We’ve never been that house on the street that goes all out with Christmas lights. Our next door neighbors do that, and I enjoy their display, but I really like the simplicity and timelessness of our decorations. We have LED candles in every window — a new addition. My mom has candles in the window every year, and I always wanted to do the same. So I finally splurged and bought two sets — 20 candles total. They operate via remote control and on a timer, and they flicker like real candles. And they look very nice from the street.

We have our main tree in the large front window, which you can also see from the street. And that’s really all we did in terms of Christmas lights that can be seen from the outside. It’s enough.

I also love real greenery at Christmas. As I was growing up, we had a real tree every year. But it just became too much to deal with. I’ve had an artificial tree for my entire adult life. However, we have five acres of real greenery, so I just had to take advantage of it. Real swags, wreaths, and garlands are so expensive if you buy them, and we have all the supplies in our own yard.

So, I went on a little foraging expedition yesterday with my pruning shears. My only expense for this was the bow from Dollar Tree ($1.25) and some craft wire. The goal: make a swag to hang from our front porch light. I have never made one before, but it seemed to me like it would be fairly easy.

So, I took cuttings from three different evergreens, arranged them how I wanted, bundled their tops together, and bound them with wire before snipping them more evenly and adding the bow. One cutting already had a cone attached, but I added two more with the wire. A lot of our cones have white residue on them, which is perfect for this.

I added a couple of red sleigh bells at first. But I removed them. I decided to just keep this totally natural (with the exception of the bow). I contemplated adding red berries, but the only berries we have are from the invasive honeysuckle all over our yard. It’s bad enough without me possibly spreading it even more. So I nixed that idea.

Et voilà!

I am very happy with how it turned out, and I think I’m going to do this every year. I might even try a wreath at some point.

So, this is my last day of a 4-day weekend. I’m using up all my vacation time before the end of the year, since it’s use or lose. So I have long weekends pretty much every weekend for the rest of the year.

And for once, I don’t dread going back to work. It’s quite an exciting time in the college admissions world, actually. Prospective students who applied in the early admission rounds will start getting their acceptances (or deferrals or rejections) around mid-December. There is a large team of us at work that will be tracking the decision release dates for as many colleges and universities as possible so we can post them on our blog. These schools will likely start announcing these dates this coming week, so things are about to get pretty busy.