How I spent Black Friday

Umkay............I'm going to be honest here. Kudos to all of you who get up at the crack of crack to go shopping on Black Friday. Me? I can't think of one material item that would make me get out of bed early on a day off. I know..........I'm missing out on the great deals, the obnoxious crowds, etc. Y'all can snicker behind my back if you went out and got a super buy yesterday. I'm fine with it. Seriously. I just hate shopping in general and if you add a big crowd just the thought of it makes me twitchy. As they say in the blogosphere...........that's how I roll. :0)



In our house we have a family tradition on the day after Thanksgiving. A tradition that is anticipated with great excitement second only (perhaps) to Christmas morning itself. A tradition that, in fact, caused my oldest son to get out of bed at exactly 6:03 because he was so keyed up about it. (You may be wondering why I didn't just get up at that point and head out to the mall since it was so early. Well......DS and I had a little deal where he wasn't allowed to wake me up until 7:00. AND he knew that I was going to run on the treadmill, shower and eat breakfast before we started. It's good to plan ahead.) Here's our tradition: we put up our Christmas decorations. It's something I enjoy doing every year on the day after Thanksgiving. I am very adamant that no Christmas decorations are allowed to go up before Thanksgiving. I believe in letting every holiday have its share of the spotlight. As my boys have gotten older they have become pretty good helpers at getting our fake Charlie Brown Christmas tree assembled and the ornaments hung on it. They pretty much poop out on me after that. In this post I am sharing a few glimpses of our Christmas decorating.

This metal sign was a gift to me from someone...........I don't remember who! If that someone is reading this I'm sorry I forgot you gave it to me. I love it, however. I am going to try to remember this sentiment during the Christmas season. I hate the thought of getting bogged down in all the preparations and thus forgetting to savor the joy.

OK.........I did do a little shopping on Black Friday. I just kept it local and took my mother-in-law who was visiting from Florida to my fave local thrift store to look for some new decorations. I purchased the two types of garland shown below at that store. I love how they look twisted together although the red star garland is so twisty that my MIL and I were both about to curse it! Seriously. There were little red stars all over the floor.




I am not totally thrilled with my corner rack. I loved how I had it decorated for fall. Even though I have a lot of Christmas decorations I haven't been able to find the right groupings for this area. I will go ahead and show what I have so far anyway. It looked better after I put a strand of white Christmas lights on it.




On the top shelf I have a very special Christmas plate that my mother-in-law, Donna, painted me for Christmas last year. She is so artistic. She painted it completely by hand and without a pattern. I love it. It is so elegant looking.

For fall I had filled this Goodwill glass goblet with fall filler. It looks great for Christmas filled with gold-glittered pinecones and shiny gold ornaments.

On the next shelf down I placed a red and white snowflake plate that I bought on BF (Black Friday) for 99 cents at my local department store.

The little trio of trees below were all purchased on BF at my favorite local thrift store. If you are local and coveting these, they have more of all three types of trees. They were each $2 or less. I love them grouped together but would like to find a perfect little tray to place them on.

I had picked up one of these Santa mugs at Goodwill over the summer. I was thrilled to find a bunch more of them at my local thrift store on BF. Now I have one for each boy. I probably won't let them actually drink from them as they are vintage and I'm not sure of the lead content in the paint. Someday, however, if they promise to be very careful with them I may let them take them from my house. ;-)

Oh.........I almost forgot to mention that the cute Christmas napkins that I used to cover a few of the shelves were picked up at a garage sale this summer. I think I paid about $1 or less for four cloth napkins. LOVE IT! (Try to top THAT deal all you BF shoppers!)

Below you can see our tree. It is decorated with white lights and a hodge-podge of ornaments which include ones my mom gave me when I was growing up, ones I made as I was growing up, ones I've collected over the years and ones my children have made. I LOVE my tree!

It is fun to have the house looking Christmasy. I am now sufficiently inspired to tackle my long to-do list. I love to handmake many of the gifts I give and unfortunately did not achieve my New Year's resolution to have all handmade gifts done by the end of October. Doesn't look good for finishing by the end of November either. Oh well, what would December be without the annual flurry of gift-making? More on that later............