If you’ve been a follower for more than a year, than you might be familiar with my family’s concept of Christmas Day. No, not December 25^th “Christmas Day”—This little idiom refers to the day after Thanksgiving (more commonly known, of course, as Black Friday). This day is reserved exclusively for the bringing of Christmas cheer to the inside, and outside, of our home.

Because our home has been decked out for the holidays since late September for a certain little collaboration, which was revealed last month, my sister, plus John and I focused attention on our parent’s house instead. It was a great day of holiday music, childhood ornaments and Elf on repeat.

But I decided to drag the fun all throughout the weekend with an unofficial Christmas Kickoff, just John and me. A scavenger-hunt-esque list was drawn up, and we hit the pavement in our little Subaru, stereo blasting Christmas tunes. If you follow me on Instagram then you probably caught wind of our impromptu holiday-themed day—I used hashtag #ChristmasKickoff to keep a running tally of our checked items, and am happy to report that we managed to cross all of them off with a flourish!

Coffee and a big flaky biscuit were our first orders of business (from two separate drive thru windows—my husband is a saint), and then it was off to pick out a fresh wreath. Since we use an artificial Christmas tree, we don’t get to enjoy the telltale scent of real evergreen. We both miss it, so this year we compromised with a fresh evergreen wreath (from Dave’s Maine Wreaths & Trees) for the front door. Just for fun, we also picked out our favorites while weaving our way through the trees up for grabs.

After that, we made our way over to the major shopping district in our city and crossed off a couple more items from our gift lists. No surprise here, but I couldn’t help but pick out a little gift for myself while we were at Target—a mini white, retro-inspired tree.  I can’t even tell you how happy that little $8 tree makes me. More on that tomorrow though.

To finish off the day, we settled in with an armful of movies (spoiler: we ended up watching Christmas Vacation on Netflix despite all of the DVD goodies you see below) and a sugar cookie or three. The day was everything good and beautiful, and I can’t help but feel a new tradition being established…

Oh, and to rewind, I ended up spending a major portion of the long holiday weekend over at my parent’s house, soaking up every moment of my sister being in town, and enjoyed general seasonal bliss by the fire. Scroll on for a couple more Christmas memories documented via Instagram that seemed fitting to share in this little behind-the-scenes look.

Happy holidays! I’m so glad that I’m finally “allowed” to talk Christmas…