Christmas House

I love to watch our home transform at Christmas time. Twinkly white lights aglow, a toasty fire crackling in the fireplace, the aroma of buttery sugar cookies sneaking out from the oven, Christmas carols jingling on the radio, hot cocoa on tap at all times...it all sends shivers of warm & fuzzy feelings racing through my body. 

I think a house feels most like a home at Christmas time. It whispers warm & cozy & I find myself not wanting to even step foot out the house, but rather, wanting to stay in & take my time sipping on that warm & cozy deliciousness from my very favorite Christmas mug. 

We decorate every inch of our home, knowing that we've got exactly one month to squeeze in as many magical Christmas moments as possible, with big hopes that over time, each of those small Christmas moments will one day snowball into sacred memories & treasured traditions.

Some of my most vivid memories, some of the memories that sweep me back to my childhood & back home, are the memories that were made at Christmastime. My brother & I would weave strings of multicolored lights through the branches of fresh smelling pine. We'd wrap shiny garland round & round until it covered our tree just beautifully {well, we thought it was beautiful, anyways}. We would carefully unwrap each ornament & find it's very own limb, where it would dangle throughout the Christmas season.  And one year, we even had the bright idea of stringing popcorn to give our tree that extra, added  little oomph. Do you realize how much popcorn it takes to go around a Christmas tree?  It's a lot of popcorn--& it's a lot of stringing. Poor Mom. Little bro & I ditched her after about twenty minutes into it & left her to string a needle & thread through bowls upon bowls of popcorn, all on her own. 

I hold very dear the Christmas memories I've made in my years. They are tucked away in my heart & they have helped to shape & mold Christmas into my most favorite time of the year. But I have to say, as special as I will always consider my own childhood memories, they simply don't hold a twinkle light to the feeling of getting to create memories for my very own family. Timeless traditions woven & intertwined with fresh, revamped ones to form holiday memories that belong solely to us. Memories that will one day sweep my children back to their childhoods & take them home when they reflect on them.

This year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, while Jett took his afternoon nap, Jared & I dragged our big tubs of Christmas decorations out of storage. We set up the tree & waited & waited & waited for our Meatball to wake up so he could help us deck the halls & trim the tree. And when he woke up & toddled into the living room, you should've seen the little spark in his eye & awestruck look on his face as he looked around at the mess of lights, ornaments, & bushy, bare tree staring back at him. It's precious to me that even though he isn't quite sure what in the world is going on, he knows in that little heart of his that something is special. These are the beginning of his lifelong memories.

Every single morning when Jett wakes up, the first thing he does while he's snuggled on my lap, waking up for the day is point to the tree & exclaim, "On! On! On!" And I gotta say, it absolutely warms my heart to know that my little boy already has a soft spot for those twinkly little lights--that my efforts of creating beautiful Christmas memories for him are well in the works. 

You'd better believe I love me some Christmas memory making. Rolling sugar cookie dough, telling the age old Christmas story, cozy Christmas jammies, Christmas Eve church service...I love every bit of it!

And now that our regular, ordinary home has been transformed into a festive Christmas house...all of that glorious Christmas memory making can begin!