// photo via Ruffled

Now that it’s officially the holiday season and socially acceptable to talk about Christmas, let’s take a moment to chat about how it’s truly the most wonderful time of the year.

I love Christmas. I’m not sure when exactly this obsession started but at some point I turned into a Christmas fanatic. When I was still in college and living at home I began hoarding vintage mercury glass ornaments – I’d scour eBay during the summer (when no one else was hunting for ornaments) and score collections of them from sellers far and wide. These then sat in boxes in my closet until I moved out and finally had all of my Christmas dreams come true – my very own full sized Christmas tree, covered completely beautiful vintage ornaments. Today’s supposed to be the kickoff of the shopping season (Black Friday, ugh) but you know what, my shopping is already done. Each year I’ve made it my goal to have all shopping done before Thanksgiving so that I’m able to savor the holiday season without any shopping stress, and you know what, it usually works out rather nicely. I also have a wrapping theme each year that I meticulously plan out – in recent years it’s been brown paper + red silk ribbon and monogram tags that I custom made from patterned scrapbook paper and a friend’s Cricut machine, metallic papers with yarn and handmade pom poms, or non-traditional colors of light blues and pinks. I take these things seriously. The funny part about this wrapping OCD is that I’m a horrible gift wrapper so I generally enlist the help of friends and family to make my visions a reality (otherwise I  do a terrible job and then get all cranky). 

I take the holiday season pretty seriously and I’m so excited that it’s finally officially here! Bring on the lights & cheer, watching Elf and listening to Christmas music non-stop and indulging in a few too many cookies and glasses of champagne.

To share my spirit and help you find yours, I wanted to share a little holiday to do list (aka my two passions combined) that I’ll be working on for the next few weeks and you could too: