The First Christmas

We moved into our new house in November with vivid dreams of a perfectly decorated Victorian home for Christmas. This had long been the dominant vision in my head, going back to the day we'd first seen the listing for the house in June. Victorian houses were basically built for very excessive yet somehow still-so-flipping-charming Christmas decorations.

The thing is... we are really tired!

Nothing about our closing was easy. It was the third home we'd gone into contract on in the course of 10 months, our bank tried to change the terms of our closing 2 days prior, and when we showed up for the walk through the morning of the closing (and about 24 hours before our moving truck was to arrive) the previous owners had not quite (read: not at all) moved out. In addition, we were both working full time and headed full steam into the winter holiday season and all the chaos that comes with it.

We picked up a tree from a pop-up in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. It turned out to be not-so-full, and once I strung the lights, it was a little more glow than tree. T had the idea to hang whatever decorations we had on whatever nails were already in the wall. Haphazard, but still festive.

I found some online tutorials to make some cheap "really good looking" garland for the front porch. I'm not sure if I just did it wrong, but it did not look very good, and I got about as far as leaving it all in a ball on the front porch before I gave up entirely.

I suppose this whole thing is a metaphor for the marathon of homeownership (especially old-homeownership). It's a warning to remember that nothing is going to be perfect immediately, not without a large lotto winning, anyway. You can only do as much as you can when you can, - and then you take pictures of only the part that looks good for your "perfect" social media posts!