This post marks the second completed year of monthly recaps. Despite periods of inconsistent blogging this past year, I’ve always made sure to get my monthly recaps up, sometimes staying up until the early morning to do so. On top of that, I published 22 of 25 Blogmas posts this past month. It was almost more content than I could keep up with writing, and I imagine that it was more content than you could keep up with reading. If you fancy catching up on some, my favourites are: new apartment tour, ice skating adventures, a day at the museum, another way to build a habit. Anywho, from here on out, I hope to get back to my regular posting schedule of 2x/week; if I could keep up with [most of] Blogmas, this should be a walk in the park eh?

There’s a gorgeous festive centerpiece on the kitchen island at home. I’ve been taking all my amateur lifestyle photos in front of it lately (always at the darkest hour of the day of course, rendering the photos almost unusable, because that’s how I roll). Non-festive box of chocolates placed by the festive centerpiece? Festive! Non-festive morning cappuccino placed by the festive centerpiece? Festive! Festive nails modeled over the festive centerpiece? Irresistibly festive!

I’ve been naughty this year and already opened some Christmas presents… To be fair, my roomie Georgina and I wanted to give each other our gifts before I left for the holidays (tomorrow!), but let’s be real, that was only an excuse. The two of us have been using all the stealth we could muster to hide our presents from each other since Thanksgiving, but we’ve been dying to give them, especially the gag gifts!

I’m writing this after spending most of my day lying in bed playing sudoku and watching Netflix. I feel anxious, but I can’t quite pinpoint it. Well, there is one thing. But it feels like a lot more. I’m waiting for something that may happen or may not, without a clue of when I should stop waiting. Everything else is put on hold.

Let me tell you the story of how I ended up in this apartment. The lease for my previous apartment ended mid August. At that time, I thought I was going to be moving to NYC, so I was looking for apartments in NYC, but I needed some place to stay in the meantime. It just so happened that my good friend Georgina had just moved into her new two-bedroom apartment in Philly and was still looking for a long-term roomie (she had an unfortunate situation in which her initial roomie backed out the night before they were supposed to sign the lease together). Until Georgina found someone, she offered her place for me to crash. It was supposed to be a short-term solution, but one month turned into another, I still hadn’t found an apartment, and she still hadn’t found a roomie. Then I decided I would stay in Philly for the next chapter of my life, and everything fell into place. I officially signed the lease at the very end of October and couldn’t wait to move in properly. It took us a long time to get here, but it was all worth it in the end, because we couldn’t have a more ideal housing situation. I feel so lucky that during this transitional period in my life, I get to live with one of my best friends from college.