Writing Lab: Lights, Legs, and Zombies

The funny thing about Seth and me around the holidays is we aren't always consistent about things like decorating. Although we may stay put in the same spot for years at a time, there's been a tone of impermanence to our lives as far as where we live for quite some time now.

Hardships like lay-offs and serious illness have seen us moving a lot, living with family members when/if we need to, and so forth. That said, it's been a long time since we lived somewhere that truly felt like "home" -- someplace that felt like it was ours to decorate and leave our stamp on however we chose.

There have been many, many holidays where we just haven't been able to get into the holiday spirit at all because of that. On the down years, we will still very likely watch our Christmas movies or make something delicious to eat for Christmas dinner, but we might not really bother decorating. It just depends on where we both are mentally and emotionally at the point where it's time to start thinking about it.

Thankfully, a bit of that malaise that's sometimes surrounded the holidays for us has been lifting a bit in recent years, so we've been doing at least a bit of decorating. As with everything we do in life, we have our own unique spin we put on things that really feels like us.

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There are two kinds of people in this world -- those that think Halloween is a single day that comes once a year and those that treat Halloween like an all-the-time affair. Seth and I are the second type. We are very much into things like horror movies, Gothic novels, creepy folk tales, and ghost stories. (Seth actually runs a very popular horror website called MoreHorror.) A lot of our Halloween-themed items stay up all year round and get a special holiday treatment. 

For instance -- please turn your attention to the rubber zombie sitting on top of our lava lamp. His name's Herbert. One of Seth's horror clients sent us a box of Halloween goodies last year and we liked Herbert so much, we couldn't bear to put him away once Halloween was over. At first we just kept him up as is when it was time to break out the Christmas Story leg lamp. Then we decided he could use a little more holiday cheer. That's when he got the multi-colored Christmas light treatment.

We haven't quite finished our holiday decorating this year, so it's all still in progress. (These shots are actually from last year.) However, we're planning on making sure our bedroom gets enough attention this time around. Since both of us work at home, our bedroom doubles as our office, so we really want to make sure it feels cheerful for a change.

Seth put up our mini Christmas tree the other day and I ordered some new lights on Amazon that should be coming soon. We have an Advent calendar for what I think is the first time ever. It hangs out on my desk and then we open one of the little windows each night before sharing the little piece of chocolate hidden inside. We're working on clearing a space in the corner where we can put a card table and a couple of chairs as well. (We eat in here a lot, as we're pretty much always at least sort of working.) 

I still don't know how much I consider myself to be into decorating, but I have to admit that even a few decorations in places I tend to see them every day has really been helping me get into the holiday spirit for the first time in what I think is a long time. Hopefully that's a sign of good things to come as we move forward into 2016.