We had just finished the main event of our day mid afternoon and I was ready to head back home and turn in, but instead, we walked the opposite way to explore the neighbourhood a bit more. We stumbled upon Plenty Cafe, which I had visited before but at a different location, but since Alice hadn’t, I agreed to checking it out with her.
All the way through middle school, whenever I went on a trip, I always brought back souvenirs for myself and for my friends. I would look for something small, something I could get multiples of in variations. A pack of pencils that looked more like mini logs with the name of a city printed along their sides; tealights with mysterious scents in ceramic tealight holders shaped like elephants; questionable soaps; notebooks smaller than the size of my palm made of recycled paper with the name of a city emblazoned on the cover; erasers shaped like food that mostly just smeared lead across the page; bamboo bookmarks shaped like dolls dressed in traditional garb; friendship bracelets in bulk; gaudy keychains; little figurines.
Christmas day is good and all, but what I really love is looking forward to Christmas. I’ve been anticipating Christmas since September, so I thought at first to share a traditional holiday bucket list. Putting together my holiday bucket list, I was pretty hyped. But looking back on the predictable list of holiday markets I wanted to shop at, desserts I wanted to bake, and films I wanted to watch was uninspiring. Plus, I had already made my way through a good portion of those activities on my list, and was ready to charge full steam ahead to make it through the rest of my bucket list in record time, leaving me more time to write about them for the blog and tackle the daunting challenge of Blogmas. But that’s not what holiday bucket lists are about. They’re not assignments to tick off; they’re about creating magical holiday experiences. So here are three magical holiday moments I’m speaking into existence.
I’m finishing up this blog post early morning of December 1, i.e. the same morning it publishes. I occasionally get into these manic moments whilst blogging and I kinda just let myself fall into them because I haven’t been blogging as much as I would like. So I’m having at it.
I’ve had a brilliant early morning thought (that might not feel so brilliant when my delirium wanes) to do a sort of Blogmas, in which I blog daily until Christmas. It’ll be a mixture of daily updates and other types of content like cafe reviews, book reviews, and Friday Favourites. I’m hoping to get a week’s worth of posts prepped this weekend so that my content creation schedule can be more flexible the rest of the month, and so that I still have time to, ya know, live my life.
I’m still brainstorming blog posts, so if there’s anything you’d like to see more of (or less of), drop it down in the comments (you can comment anonymously too)! Any questions? Topics? Doesn’t necessarily have to be festive. Or could be!
So much has changed since graduation. Everyone I’ve survived college with is off on their next adventure. There wasn’t the rush of everyone leaving campus together, riding the same train to the airport or the bus to NYC. Some people even had to go back to work on Friday, though most took out a vacation day anyway. As for me? I was blessed to celebrate Thanksgiving the same way I did the last three years: with Georgina’s family in NYC. Not only do I still live in Philly, which is close enough to visit NYC for a long weekend or day trip, but also Georgina and I are currently roomies. There was no way she’d let me spend Thanksgiving alone in Philly!
It was a little heartbreaking having to tear apart my first apartment upon graduation, but I’ll always have this post to remember it by! Before packing myself up into two suitcases, five boxes, and some miscellaneous bags, I took photos and video clips of my room where I spent the last half of my college experience. Sure, this apartment had its quirks, like uneven floorboards, cracking paint, a leaky fridge, and mice, but I made it into my cosy haven. My apartment gave me a place to settle in and make my own. Sometimes I wondered if I should have lived on campus for all four years of college, but that doubt went out the window when I started packing up my apartment and remembered how annoying it is to move!