Kicking Off The Holidays

Last week kicked off the first of many shortened work weeks for me. Some people like to use their vacation days in chunks sprinkled throughout the year. Me, I like to take a few days here and there to create several very long weekends. This approach gives me a mini vacation every 4-6 weeks. This year I’ve decided to take even more extended weekends to fully enjoy the holiday season.

Since I only worked 2 days last week, I had plenty of time to kitty-sit, prep for Thanksgiving, take care of a few home improvement projects, chalkboard paint the hell out of everything, and decorate for Christmas . I wish this was how I made a living.

Kitty-sitting

The only thing that makes vacation and a holiday better is a kitty cat. If you’re a long time reader, you may recognize Miss Lilly. She’s my cousin’s cat and I jump at the chance to take care of her.

 

Thanksgiving

Isaac and I had the luxury of staying in town this year for Thanksgiving. Sadly, I fear we won’t get away with this for long since his family lives in Seattle, WA. It just seems that holidays are much more enjoyable and relaxing when they don’t involve expensive plane tickets and crowded airports. That’s just how I feel about it. Anyway, I made a yummy vegetarian spread which included tempeh loaf, cashew ricotta, stuffing, brussel sprouts, and mashed sweet potatoes. I made up all the dishes and don’t have recipes—sorry. But you can Google the dishes and find close approximations.

Vegetarian heaven!

 

Home Improvements

When I take on any sort of project, I always make the biggest mess. It’s sort of a “gets worse before it gets better” scenario. And putting together multiple Ikea dressers at 3am resulted in a disaster that wasn’t addressed for about five days. 

I don’t know about you, but something about assembling Ikea furniture, using a drill and screwdriver, makes me feel so competent—like I could do anything! That’s probably taking it a bit far, but I really do pat myself on the back. It’s not that easy to read directions and create something that looks like the picture. Only the billions of people who were in line alongside us at Ikea are as skilled as me.

And I can’t take all the credit. I had some help from my trusty assistant.

 

Chalkboard Paint

This stuff is all over Pinterest and I eventually gave into the craze by purchasing a can of the spray paint variety. My first project was painting flower pots that sit on our front stoop. I thought it would be so cute to draw different words and/or images on the pots according to the current season or holiday. However, I didn’t get to draw a thing before one of the pots fell off the stoop and broke. Huge sadface!

Chalkboard paint project #2 also turned out to be a huge #fail. My biggest pitfall as a crafter is my impatience and half-assedness (not a real word). Instead of waiting to get the paint you apply with a brush or using painter’s tape, I just created a rectangle with pieces of paper that were scotch-taped to the jars and began a-spraying. I don’t have an “after” photo because the jars are still sitting on my back porch. And what was supposed to look like this…

…has paint specks and drips everywhere and looks more like this.

 

Christmas Decorating

The most pleasurable thing I did last week was decorate my home for Christmas. Some years decorating seems more of a burden, but this year I was excited to make my home very festive (and I had Crate & Barrel gift cards to fund the project!). I don’t love red and green Christmas décor and instead, prefer something more subdued. I decided on a blue, silver, and gold theme this year and I’m pretty pleased with the result.

Our stockings came from verabradley.com. (I just noticed that the damn things are $5 cheaper than when I ordered them a week ago…grrrrrr) Although I’ve never been a huge Vera Bradley fan, the color scheme of these fit perfectly and the price was unbeatable.

Finally, Isaac and I opted for a miniature Christmas tree which we decorated with precious mini ornaments we found at Crate & Barrel.

For a tree skirt, I bought 1/2 a yard of fabric from Walmart for a few bucks.

There are a few more touches I want to add, but overall I love my festive home. It has been a delight to turn on all the Christmas lights, cuddle on the couch with Isaac, and enjoy this holiday season.