HAPPY DECEMBER!
The weekend after Thanksgiving, Anna and I got right to Christmas decorating. Now, I love a good Christmas cookie baking session, some light decorating, and Christmas music once in awhile during this time of the year. [Sidenote: I can NOT stand Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas". Christmas DJs do not comprehend the term "moderation" when it comes to this song. I'm proud to say that so far this Christmas season I've managed to only hear this song once. May it stand as so!] As I was saying, I can get into the Christmas mood, to a certain extent. However, my spirit is pitiful in comparison to Anna's!!! She started playing her Christmas playlist as soon as we got home from Thanksgiving dinner, she's been going around the house singing Christmas carols, and she's hung Christmas ornaments and snowflakes all around her room. Hahaha so she has been a positive influence on my own Christmas spirit, and it's been quite fun to get back into the festive mood at a level I unfortunately haven't experienced since grade school :)
So, with that Christmas spirit in tow, we plowed through a local discount store to gather items suitable for our apartment decorating. The bulb ornaments pictured at the top of this blog made up a majority of our purchase, but my personal favorite selection of the day was undoubtedly these creepy Santa Claus ornaments. Clearly, at this point in the entry I have no choice but to display an irrationally large picture of this ornament.
These little guys made quite the fine addition to our tree, and I don't think the final product would be nearly as gorgeous without them!
Along with our Christmas Tree, Anna and I have been tirelessly creating hand-made snowflakes to further liven the mood of our apartment! But really. We've spent several hours total making dozens of them, and hanging them all over the apartment. This really may be what finally caused our 3rd room mate to leave the apartment. (hhahahahah just kidding, she left because our landlords are muy pesados and I'm finally starting to empathize with her but I will get to all of that later...) So in a sense our apartment underwent a bit of a makeover, and now that it's properly decorated I thought I would share some before and after photos!
BEFORE AFTER
 |
| Entryway |
 |
| Living Room |
 |
| Second view of the Living Room |
 |
| The Kitchen...as you will notice, there is no difference. Even with boatloads of Christmas spirit, there is nothing that can better the old-fashioned, tasteless kitchen, |
 |
| My bedroom! I am super pleased with the result |
Now, everyone who has seen what I've done to my room has complimented me on a job well done. Everyone, that is, except for the landlords. Rather than remarking about the the great space I've created, they have disapproved of my moving the furniture around, scolded me for hanging something on the wall that could take the paint off, and complained about fingerprints on my wall and the curtains getting wrinkled and dirty when I took them off (both of which only occurred because I had to have a friend come fix my blinds when the landlords took 3-4 weeks to respond to my problem). COULDN'T THEY HAVE JUST SAID "HEY CYNTHIA. THAT 'C' YOU MADE IS REAL NEAT. HAVE A NICE DAY."?? Man. If nothing else, this has taught me that I'm capable of arguing in Spanish, so that counts for something! Language improvement!
So I now only have one week left of work in 2012, and work has really been slowing down because all of my students have exams. What I'm most looking forward to at this point is an itty-bitty reunion with Alex, Jill, and Kevin 2 weeks from today in London where we'll celebrate my birthday, then we'll jet off to Barcelona for New Years celebrations with some wonderful french friends, and finally we'll explore Venice together!! I'm thinking this experience in and of itself will make up for my 5-week bedridden state last winter from ACL surgery, huh? :) :) :) :) :)
I love all the shoes lined up against the wall in the last pic! Defs a good touch.
ReplyDelete