the christmas decorations.

this is my absolute favorite time of the year.  hands down, without a doubt.  right before halloween until the new year is the best part of the calendar year.  most people think that it is a little crazy that i worked in retail for 3 holidays and still could get this excited.  this happens to also be richards favorite time of year, thank goodness.  last year we spent our 1st christmas together and it was so much fun.  this year though, he will be living with me,  a whole new type of experience for him.  insert large laughs and eye rolls here.  i like to go all out, decorating the day after thanksgiving, listening to christmas music right before thanksgiving and wanting to completely change the whole house to match the season.  i have always looked forward to the day when i would one day have my own place to decorate.

when richard and i talked about moving in together somehow our talks always made their way to christmas decorations.  we agreed and disagreed pretty equally with the other person.  i however, was not really sure how this was going to work.  we decided instead of "saving" all of this imaginary money to buy christmas things, we would start buying a couple things each week after halloween.  i always think i am going to save, then i find other things i want, forget about the saving, and now end up buying way more things than i should have on both fronts.  i thought this was an excellent plan.

we began looking the next weekend after the halloween party.  most places already had christmas decorations out, so this was an easy task.  we had to start with the most important thing, the tree.  we werent ready to buy, but knew we needed to agree on something to start with.  when the discussions first started richard was positive we were going to have a white tree.  are you kidding me.  christmas trees are green, lets just say we decided on a green tree.  we knew that we did want a fake one, but which one would come later.  the next discussion was the type of lights that went on a tree.  now, not only did he want a white tree, he wanted white lights to go on the tree.  once i finally convinced him on colored strands, he then decided we could just buy single colors and put that on the tree.  oh how i had to hold back!  i am all about the multi-colored and at least some need to be blinky.  that was a whole other discussion, because blinky would drive him crazy.

by this point just about all of my friends and family knew about the discussions we were having about just the tree and laughing hysterically on the side.  then we had to decided on pre-lit or not.  i was soooo far against that as well.  you must put your own lights on the tree.  finally we came to the decision to combine our two ideas.  we would have a green tree, with mostly multi-colored lights, only one strand of blinky (ps they were 150 count, yes), and one or more strand of white.  i wasnt really sure how that was going to look, but we will get to that next time.

while all of these discussions were going on, we were shopping around for other decorations.  we did a lot of looking and not much buying.  it seemed like richard just would not commit to buying anything.  now, i am all about looking and knowing what my options are, but it gets to a point where we cant go look at target anymore, because they still have the same things they did 2 days ago.  there were quite a few things we disagreed on in this category too.  i am all about color, if you couldnt tell from the previous tree discussion.  i am totally stoked that christmas decorations are now including pinks, purples, whites, blacks, oranges, and blues.  richard, not so much.  he is very much a traditionalist gravitating towards the red/green/gold themed items.  now luckily for me, these items have become somewhat more modern so i couldnt completely rule them out.  plus i love the new updated classics they are coming out with now.  not just an old looking train, but one that has new colors and graphics.  garland made out of christmas balls.  and table cloths that are no longer just gold sparkly.

as we did finally start buying we knew we didnt really have anywhere to store these things.  so they landed....at least it was all centrally located! 

it all started to come together then.  richard accepted that i would buy a few out there things he wasnt used to yet.  and i accepted that he would always love his white lights.  plus none of it really mattered when he told me that of course we are decorating the day after thanksgiving!  the little piddly stuff doesnt really matter.  and really who cares if he wants to buy single colored light strands, its going to look fantastic in the windows.  and i learned i need to compromise a little on christmas decorations, there are 2 of us living here silly.