Oh hi, Blog!  It’s been awhile, and I apologize.  We’ve been decking the halls, celebrating Christmas early with family friends, fitting in snuggles on our new couch amongst meeting with potential 2013 brides!  …and I’ve been doing a little extra on the side: being an elf for Santa and delivering not only presents, but maybe a little something sexy with boudoir sessions!

If I were to really be honest, we’re 10 days into the most joyful time of year, and I’m not feeling it just yet.  That magic I talked about in my last personal post?  Nope.  Frosty’s snow-globe has glitter falling, and I am truly happy crafting scenes familiar to our Mitten state (even if we haven’t had but a few flakes) and trimming our tree.  However, much of my life, the Christmas season came swooping in with the finishing of collegiate exams and packing suitcases en route to home where we’d bake cookies, don the tree with glittered pinecones and smeared painted gingerbread from our elementary days.  We’d rush around together with shopping lists and travel together all buttoned up from home to home to celebrate with those we call family after grabbing wrapping paper and bows from mom’s collection downstairs.

It’s weird for me: this transition from living in the traditions that my family has built to creating my own.  And while this is my third Christmas slowly moving from days of old to living right here, I’m still having trouble inching forward.  Being a grown up with a health insurance plan, a budget to maneuver to make room for wrapping paper and bows (now I understand why my mother saves all those bows…), being away from what was home for so many years.  It feels odd not to be surrounded by the same decor I really did overlook for 20-odd years and not be able to watch the Hallmark channel close by the fire continually stacked with wood and tended to by my dad.  I’ve never liked change.  I don’t like change.  Buuuut I’m learning (albeit, slowly) to embrace and celebrate it for the good that eventually comes.

So what is it they say?   The best is yet to come, right?  I’ve always thought it poetic and beautiful when our Decembers were filled with leaf-less trees and green lawns only to wake up on Christmas morning to a ground full of snow — scintillating and untouched.   Pure magic.  And maybe our Christmas tree doesn’t smell or feel like a blue spruce or a douglas fir.  And we don’t have totes upon totes to unload with Christmas memories.   But we’re making them.  With each holiday, we’re creating our own.  And perhaps this year, we’ll wake up Christmas morning to magic.

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another segment of “a week in the life..”

*(Instagram is a free app for iPhones (and now Androids!) that features various filters that are easy-to-use and make posting to Twitter, Facebook, and my blog [with the help of my quickly-made Photoshop template], easy-peasy! You can follow me @brennigan)

A hot cup of tea and a cinnamon twist donut call to me.  Enough of those, and I’ll be saying Ho! Ho! Ho!  Signing off for tonight, my friends.