After The Holiday

It's a gloriously sunny, mid-40's day. It suddenly doesn't feel like the day after Christmas! It's nice to have some of this ice and snow go away. We didn't have as much of that ugly stuff as a lot of the country did – but when it comes to ice, it's all nasty.

Hubby asked me this morning if I wanted to go shopping anywhere. As much as I wanted to say “let's go!”, I was good and we stayed home. I'm a big sucker for after-Christmas sales. I won't touch Black Friday with a ten-foot pole, and I really don't care to shop between Thanksgiving and Christmas at all. But get me to December 26^th, and I'm ready! I love trying to hit the marked-down Christmas merchandise before it's sold out. But I bought our 2014 Christmas cards last week at Dollar Tree. That's the only necessity I have for next Christmas.

I've made some good purchases over the years – most of my Christmas shirts (and there are many!) were purchased after Christmas at 50 – 75% off regular price. I've bought Christmas pj's, Christmas cards, wrapping paper, occasionally Christmas ornaments and decorations.

My favorite post-Christmas mark downs are the Christmas gift packs – Christmas chocolates, hot chocolate, tea and coffees. One year I scored several summer sausage and cheese packages for about 75 cents each. Once in awhile you can get lucky on overstocked Christmas gifts – my mixer, for example, cost me just $3 one year after Christmas. I'm not surprised – I wouldn't imagine too many people would be excited to get a mixer as a holiday gift.

For the first time in a long time, I'm still comfortable with the Christmas decorations. They'll probably come down and be packed away over the weekend. Normally I want them to disappear as soon as Christmas is over. In fact, a year or two I've had to stop myself from taking them down before Christmas Day! Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, Christmas is over once we've had our celebration with the kids and grandkids.

I have a selection of Christmas dish towels that I did take down this morning, but only because I was doing laundry and wanted them washed before they are stored. I also took down my birthday cards, washed and packed away the Christmas shirts, and put away the Christmas CD's. But that's as far as I've gone.

Packing the decorations away is always somewhat of a challenge. I tend to go through each room individually, clearing the room out as I go. Once everything is packed away in the containers, I make a final sweep through each room. I still seem to miss something and find it a week or so later, after the containers are all put away. At least I'm consistent!

So our Christmas is over for another year. If yours is over, I hope you had a memorable one. If not, please take time to enjoy your celebration. Life's too short to stress out over the holidays!