Sometimes I start to think “oh my gosh, people are probably wondering why I haven’t blogged about [this] or [that]” and then I realize that NOBODY CARES… This blog is more for me than anyone else. So, I APOLOGIZE that my post on my Christmas decorations is so much later than usual. Dedicated readers of this blog know that as soon as the clock strikes midnight on the day after Thanksgiving I already have everything all up and ready to go and the cookies are in the oven. I’ve managed to listen to all of my fav Christmas albums — several times over in fact — but the house decorations are not as elaborate as in years past. Things are a bit more subtle this year, mainly due to the fact that we got a real live Christmas tree and that changed the whole dynamic. It’s also been mega dreary around here lately, and no snow, so my house is dark af. My cozy german hymns would keep me warm except they just make me wistful for true winter weather.

I’ve also decided against getting a ton of greenery, like I did last year. Eh. It’s work, and it’s messy, and I got a baby. Ain’t nobody got time for that. This has been an extremely transitional year. Next year Christmas will be a much livelier affair.I love this tree. It’s kinda scrappy and with the big lights and comically tall treetop and gold star, the whole thing is very charming. Plus it just feels good having a real tree in the house. I can’t remember when we started cutting our own tree in my parents’ house, but it’s been a long time. But what about your beloved vintage aluminum tree? You find yourself asking. I found a pretty good home for it:The most fitting place for it, actually. It looks great in the ultra mid-century modern basement, next to that sexy danish modern couch, underneath the cheeky cardboard deer head. Unh, I love it when stuff comes together like this. I even got a mini tree skirt so it wouldn’t scratch up our fancy reclaimed wood side table.And then, the setup in my office has always been this tiny silver tree from Target wrapped in simple twinkle lights. This candle has an excellent pine smell. I had one last year and I burned through it quite fast so I re-upped this year in a bigger size.

I’ve been largely inconsistent with sending out Christmas cards since I moved out of my parents’ house. It’s been a mixture of buckling down and designing, printing and sending them out. Other years I’m like “whatever” and just put a thing on Facebook. My mom has had a long, long, long tradition of making a new card every year from scratch and since she’s from the old days, most times she did them all by hand, for like a million people. I tried doing a version of that, but found that to actually get in the way of doing cards at all. There’s enough to do during the holidays  already, ya know?

So, this year, since I have a great camera & a little more money than usual, I decided to let someone else do most the work for me. Luckily there’s just so many great companies these days who have excellent designs and print capabilities. I decided to go through Artifact Uprising. They have really cool minimal (almost anti-holiday) designs and the turnaround time was super quick. PLUS they send you envelopes too, which saved me a trip to Paper Source. Hooray! I took the photo of us while we were at Lutsen two weekends ago. While it was pretty slushy up there, we did get lucky one morning when there was a dusting of snow. The snow was literally melting while we were taking our picture. I wanted to do devil horns, but we settled for black and white punk rock t-shirts (although mine is more like, a t-shirt about berserkers, to go with my tattoo.) BTW the t-shirt Alan has on in the softest t-shirt there ever was. He always has the softest t-shirts. 

Obviously it’s too late for this year, but next time you’re in the market to get some nice cards made, Artifact Uprising is a great choice if you like clean and minimal designs. Minted & Tiny Prints are some other options with a seemingly never-ending variety of designs.  Paperless Post  feature designs from real designers!

Merry Christmas, wherever you are, whoever you are.