Merry Christmas Mantle

If you do not already know this, know it now: I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday. I have unashamedly been listening to Christmas music since just after Halloween. (No, I do not hate Thanksgiving.  I sing "Happy Holidays" with gusto on that day, and pass the Turkey with joy.)

Even more specifically, I love decorating for Christmas.

Brand New Fall Decor

As Dan and I continue to settle into our house, taking my time on the little details is becoming increasingly important to me. Since we moved in, I have been making a conscious effort to fight that little voice that has been screaming, "DECORATE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW RIGHT AWAY!!" And do you know why I fight that voice? Because that voice is the one that I can blame for my far too large, totally uncoordinated, paid-too-much-for, didn't-really-even-match-or-work--in-my-space-when-I-brought-it-home collection of weird, punched tin "wall art" that was big time trending when I moved in to my first apartment. Anybody else been there? Anybody else caved in to that awful pressure that is a new, empty space?

I learned my lesson. With our house, I'm trying to be thoughtful. I'm giving things time. I'm thinking of decorating our house as a lifestyle of projects instead of a one time event.

(It's been a big help in saving money...If I'm out, I don't buy decorative things just because I like them. I have a rule that a decorative purchase has to have been premeditated...I need to have had some previous notion that a certain space needed a certain thing. If I can't look at something and know exactly where it would go and that it would definitely work, then I don't get it. It's so good for me.

Sorry for that tangent...)

Anyway, in light of that commitment to slow, thoughtful decorating, I am really excited to share with you a few things that have been coming together! Keep reading after the jump to get a little more up close and personal with the decor in the Hig house.

Wedding Photo Sneak Peek

As our wedding becomes more and more of a memory, and less and less of the focus of my daily life, I find myself wistfully desiring that I lived in a bigger city with needier couples so that I could regularly offer myself as a wedding slave. Not a coordinator, caterer, designer...a slave. That's really what you need, after all, when you're trying to put a wedding together - someone to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to your cause and be willing to face long, caffeine-jacked hours of sappy love songs and burns from hot glue guns...

Yes. That is what I want to be. A glue-gunning, Buble-listening, coffee-drinking wedding slave. 

*Sigh.* 

Nonetheless, life moves on, and to ease the pain of post-wedding-distress-disorder one can always look forward to the day when they receive their wedding photos. (I suppose there is also the alternative of spending time with your brand-new husband, but this is a post about wedding photos so...) I got mine not long ago and was so so so so excited to look through them.  I don't want to post them on Facebook until I've been able to share some of the special ones with some special people, but I thought I would offer a little sneak-peek here on the el blog-o. 

First Days On the Job

It's always a little weird when you're starting out, isn't it?

There are always those little first day jitters, those moments when you think, "Oh crap, I just really messed that up and now everybody's looking at me like the newbie, aren't they? AREN'T THEY?! That's it I'm quitting."

It's always a slightly painful realization that you just have to wait for things to come, to learn, to get used to how it is here at the new job.

I consider yesterday as being my first day on the job at Wives, Inc. There was no name tag, no welcome packet, no instructions on what I can and cannot wear...but it definitely had all the same first day feelings.