December is finally here and like many other people throughout the world, my family is crazy about it, although not as crazy as my neighbor who decorated his apartment and the entire building since the third week of November. I love the season, not precisely because of the festivities per se, but due to everything around them. I really love how my dad goes crazy about designing the whole decorations of our house, how he gets mad whenever we don’t want to help him, or how he gets mad when we actually do, but we don’t understand his vision (my dad is a designer so you can imagine how nightmarish this can be).
Traditionally we place a Nativity set, and every single year there’s a huge battle between my mom and the rest of us to put the set, although no one wants to. Lovely time of the year, seriously. I don’t mind the parties, although you have one almost every day, so that’s kind of cool. But going back to the decorations, I promised myself that the moment I had my own apartment I wouldn’t do any decorations at all.
I was determined to stick to my decision, until people started asking me if we could make our Holiday dinner at my place, including my parents, and I just had to yield to the Holiday spirit and look for decorations. Now, I was about to call my dad to ask him what he had in mind for my place, when the classic bulb over my head appeared. I just thought, “If this is my place and I’m being forced to decorate even when I don’t want to, I’ll do it on my own way.”
So, I grabbed my phone and started looking for the most unconventional and weirdest decoration ideas to piss off my parents and still make my place look nice for the different dinners I was going to host. You know there are very creative people around the Internet with great quirky ideas I had to copy.
At first I thought I would recreate the most original decorations I saw on the Internet, like painting the shadow of the Grinch on the wall and putting some lights coming out of his bag, as if he had removed them from their place. But while I thought it was an awesome idea, I knew some people wouldn’t get the reference, so I had to look for other alternatives. So, since most of my family and friends would come to celebrate Christmas, I had to start with the tree.
Of course, I wouldn’t buy a new natural tree because that’s just encouraging something I don’t believe in, and I wasn’t going to spend money on an artificial one, so I started looking for other alternatives to get it. There are tons of ways to replace them, from making one with books or decorating any random tree or plant you have at home, to arranging the lights in the shape of a tree and getting a step ladder to hang ornaments. I could write pages and pages of the many alternatives for trees, but I went for the one that called me the most. So, I hanged ornaments from the ceiling to form the shape of the tree, and it looked stunning.
Once I was happy with my tree, I was drunk with the Holiday spirit and wanted more. I don’t know how it happened, but I put my Ringo Starr Christmas album, made myself a drink, and started decorating, and without noticing it, I was already singing and excited about decorating the place. So, the tree looked amazing, but now I wanted my whole house to look as if an elf had barfed all over the place.
So, I started to get creative. I was still kind of obsessed with the Grinch theme, so I put his silhouette on one of my glass doors so that the light of the room would make it pop. This only sparked my geek side, so I took my crafts kit and started fashioning my own geeky decorations. I remembered how great Christmas was when I was studying at Scotland, and I wanted to bring those memories back with Hogwarts-inspired decorations. I took my house’s colors, green and silver, from Slytherin of course, and made a nice garland I put on one of my walls. But I just wanted more and more.
I took some of my dad’s ornaments from previous years, adapted them to my favorite movies and shows, and hanged them all over the place. It took me about two weeks, and once I was about to put an end to this madness, I found the best menorah I had ever seen. Of course, I got it for my Jewish friend, so that she felt there was something of her in my celebration. The last item I put was a huge Dr. Who wreath I copied from one of the pins I saved on Pinterest.
Everybody loved my quirky and unrelated decorations. Even my parents thought it was super original, and more importantly, as crazy as I am. Needless to say, my home became the official venue for the Holiday celebrations, so I’ve been doing this process of decorating for the past three years. Without knowing it, one day I realized I was scolding those who came to help me because they didn’t understand my ideas, so basically I ended up turning into my father (sigh), but hey, at least the apartment looks great every year.
More on home decor here:
7 Ideas To Decorate Your First Apartment To Reflect Your Independence
6 Ways To Decorate Your Room According To Your Personality Type
Effortless Ways To Make The Most Of Your Shoe Box Bedroom
