The next 6 weeks are to be relished and cherished. What brings me joy is decorating in early November so we all have more time to enjoy our Christmas house so I was chomping at the bit to start decorating and transitioning. But Lexie asked me (before going to Toronto for 10 days ) to hold off because she wanted to do a live greenery photo shoot at our place as advertising for the floral shop she works at. Isn’t it funny how when someone tells you you can’t do something how much worse you want to do it? So I held off until yesterday. (I started writing this last Tuesday). True confessions. I did start to put things up while she was away that wouldn’t affect her photo shoot.
I know it sounds totally bizarre (and pathological) to most people but I have Christmas drapes and dishes and towels and rugs and silk plants, sheets and lights and music. Mugs, candles and books and magazines and a partridge in a pear tree. So I started to switch those things out before I did anything about actual decor.
I went into the floral studio with Lexie on the Sunday she returned and helped her make garlands and floral arrangements and by ‘help’ I mean, holding the end of the garland taut while watching ‘Love Actually’. My favorite part of that movie is where Hugh Grant (who is the new Prime Minister of Britain) starts dancing to Jump (to my love) and doing a fine job I might add, thinking he is alone until he runs into his Executive Assistant. I digress.
Lexie brought all the greenery to the house late Monday afternoon. Meanwhile I was supposed to be making iced gingerbread cookies for the kitchen shoot. But I had a friend drop by with Starbucks and we proceeded to have a good visit until mid afternoon and when I finally got to the gingerbread recipe I realized that the dough had to sit in the fridge for 12 hours. Oops! I quickly proceeded to get the dough made so I could do cookies first thing in morning and when I was done, I thought to myself ‘this texture is more like cake not cookie dough’ so I reread the recipe and noticed upon studying it a little closer that possibly it said 1/4 cup of yogurt not 3/4 cup so now I had to double the recipe and held back on one of the other wet ingredients. Oy! The dough tasted amazing so I put it in the fridge for 12 hours and proceeded to put up a fake garland in the archway to our living room and embellish it with other lifelike greenery to distract from the fakeyness of it and after an hour and a half of installing command hooks and having a couple break away I decided I didn’t really like it there. Mike and I went out for the evening and I was hoping it would be laying on the floor when I returned but alas it was still up. I decided to take it down before bed and removed command hooks as delicately as possible but a few bits of paint decided they didn’t want to be on the archway either. Looks like I will be doing some post Christmas reconstruction.
I awoke the next morning and proceeded to relocate the garland. After 2 hours I finally had it up in the new spot and a couple of command hooks popped off. Luckily I had used so many that two didn’t really affect it much. I had already hung the garland on the floor mirror in the front entry so I thought I would embellish it according to a picture I picked off of Pinterest and was quite pleased with the result. Every time I work with the fake garland (or real, for that matter) a vacuuming session ensues. I might mention at this point that our power nozzle is broken so I have to do this vacuuming bending over or on my knees just using the hose. It’s back breaking fun. So as I was vacuuming for the 4th time in less than 24 hours I heard a crash behind me. My mirror garland had decided it didn’t like the pretty things I hung on it and departed the mirror. I guess I would be vacuuming on my knees one more time. But now I was gritty and determined. That garland was going to hang on that mirror come hell or high water or both. I took a deep breath and spelled out a few obscenities and set to work hanging that garland once again. Command hooks had their chance and failed. So I brought out the big nails and decided I would be doing some hole filling and painting after Christmas. If this didn’t work I was thinking about using gorilla tape. Well that was Tuesday and now it’s Saturday and both garlands are still up.
I really tried not to overdo it this year but you know how it goes. Honestly, I did take a couple of things down in an effort to achieve that ‘less is more’ look. In any case, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
The Red Plaid Apron 