A funny thing happened on the way to Christmas..

I started decorating the tree and suddenly stopped with three unopened boxes of ornaments still waiting to be hung. It wasn’t that I ran out of gas- I simply felt I had arrived. All I had put up were the silver balls..and I was totally satisfied; I was finished.

I am craving simplicity this year and yet..

I am thoroughly enjoying scrolling through instagram marveling at snapshots of holiday homes that are completely transformed with Christmas decorations. Seems the new trend is to change up absolutely everything in a room for the season… wall art, dishes, sheets, pillows..they all get packed up and exchanged for reds and blacks, silver and white and antlers and snowflakes and fake fur.. I mean yowza- what a lot of work!

The pillows though..they fascinate me the most. I see them in the stores, hundreds of them.. Santas, snowmen, scenery, sayings…lots and lots of sayings designed to evoke the “Christmas feels..” all of them stacked up high, tumbling off shelves. They aren’t cheap these pillows and for the life of me, I just can’t imagine buying that many things that spend ten and a half months of the year stored in the closet..

But there they are…all over instagram… gracing sofas and beds and porches in colorful, cozy scenes worthy of a Hallmark movie.

We used to ask each other “when do you take your tree down?”

Now it’s “when do you swap out the red sheets.. take down the resin deer head.. pack up the elf mugs, pull up the HO HO HO welcome mat, replace the winter paintings, swap out the merry martini glasses and smush all of those yuletide pillows and blankets into attic bound, super-sized lawn and leaf bags?”

I know I don’t want to do all that, but I’d be lyin’ if I said I never dipped my toe into the madness.. (minus the pillows)

cause I did..

back in the day,

and I loved it.