It’s beginning to feel a lot like (a different) Christmas

I absolutely love the holidays. The food, the decorations, the music, the movies, and especially the big family get-togethers. Typically for the holidays we travel back to my hometown. Thanksgiving and Christmas Day are spent at my grandmother’s house with the whole family (and I do mean the whole family; aunts, uncles, cousins, second-cousins, third-cousins, nephews, nieces…there’s a LOT of us). Christmas Eve we do a smaller celebration at my mom’s with my siblings and step-siblings.

It’s absolutely my favorite time of the year.

Sadly, this year, we will be breaking tradition and not going home for the holidays (I’m actually tearing up as I write this).

Because the restaurant I manage is open literally 365 days a year, I’ll be spending the happiest time of the year ensuring other families are having a holly, jolly Christmas (and Thanksgiving and New Year’s).

It sucks, but I knew what I was getting into when I accepted this job.

It’s particularly bittersweet since this will be my new niece’s first holidays. More importantly, it’s the last holiday season before baby brother graduates from high school. As he’s been entertaining ideas of joining the military (yes, that idea terrifies me), there’s a possibility he won’t be home for the holidays next year.

At first, I was planning on just about ignoring the holidays. How could it possibly feel like the holidays if we weren’t surrounded by the whole extended family? How could I feel merry missing out on seeing my family on the few days a year we all manage to be in one place at the same time? Granted, Scott and I will be traveling home for a belated celebration after the new year (when the restaurant industry around here turns into a veritable ghost town for a month). But I went through this same situation back when I worked at a resort hotel, and it’s just not the same.

So, as far as I was concerned, the holidays wouldn’t really exist. I didn’t plan on doing any decorating or cooking. Thanksgiving and Christmas would just pass by like any other day at work.

But then I realized something.

In the five years we’ve been together, Scott and I have never spent a holiday alone. It’s never been just the two of us.

That realization gave me pause. Maybe, I thought, we have even more reason to go all out for the holidays and make it special.

So, yeah, Christmas is definitely back on (we might do a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for two somewhere around Thanksgiving Day, but Christmas is going to be the big star of this show).

We’re going to participate in some fun, festive Christmas activities (like the annual light display at the North Carolina Arboretum). We’re going to bake cookies and watch our favorite movies. We’re going to start a few new traditions. And, oh yeah, we’re going to decorate.

I’ve already started picking up some odds and ends to bring holiday cheer into the house (thank you, craft stores, for putting everything on sale!). But I plan on doing a lot of DIY decor projects. Scott will tell you one of my favorite places in the world is Hobby Lobby. He will not enter that store with me because he just doesn’t have the patience to watch me browse craft supplies for hours.

I’ve got a loooong list of projects I’ll be working on over the next month (after I finish the picture window I teased on Instagram). And, of course, I’ll be sharing the results as well as some tutorials.

My holidays this year may not find me sitting around the Christmas tree in grandma’s living room, or curled up on my mom’s couch watching Miracle on 34^th Street

…but it will find me with my handy glue gun, glitter, and ribbon.