Right now, I am bundled up with a blanket sitting on my living room floor with a Christmas movie on in the background. My Christmas tree lighting up the whole room giving me enough light to write today’s blog post. I haven’t posted a Blonde Moment in a while and I finally have some free time so let’s get these started again!
December is one of my favorite months of the year and every year it goes by so fast. This year, I made an effort to have my tree up early and have the apartment decorated and clean so I could spend the month enjoying it. I took out my boxes of Christmas decor that were collecting dust in my closet since the move. While I was opening the boxes, I couldn’t help but get a little emotional because this is my first in my own apartment. It has been so much fun to decorate the tree and put up my little holiday decor around the apartment. After a long day of work and a very chilly walk home from the train, it is so nice to walk in my apartment door and turn on the Christmas tree.
Every December, I set goals for myself and a long list of things that I want to do. Lots of trees to visit, themed restaurants to try and excuses to get dinner or drinks with friends. Last Friday, I went out to dinner with a friend from Jersey who moved to Philly a few months ago. Life can get so busy with work and responsibilities, that I often forget to make plans with friends. Having a boyfriend is great, but I desperately needed some girl time lately and I was happy a friend reached out to me to get dinner. After the check came and we finished our glasses of wine, we decided to grab another drink at a place around the corner. It honestly had been a while since I went out drinking with friends and it was much needed. I have been living in Philly for 9 months now and I am still working on finding a group of girls to hang out with.
Over the weekend, I slept late and had a quiet few days to myself. Most of the time, I schedule so much in one weekend that I don’t get time to stay in bed until noon or actually eat breakfast. On Saturday, I finally got dressed and went to Rittenhouse to do some last minute Christmas shopping and do some window shopping. I’ve always loved to be with friends and be social, but I also need my alone time. Saturday was perfect because I got some errands done and then put my Christmas pajamas on while I spent the night watching tv and wrapping presents. My budget was small this year (#poor), so I went a little crazy on the wrapping to make up for it.
I had zero plans for Sunday except to do a big clean of my apartment and finish wrapping some gifts. After a few hours of watching Reality TV in bed while getting some kitty cuddles in, I finally started to be productive in the afternoon. It sounds crazy, but I never spend my weekends with a slow start to my day. I definitely need to start my mornings with coffee and breakfast in bed more often. The most productive thing I did that day was shower before Jake came over for our usual Sunday dinner together. Maybe it was because I actually had some free time, but I actually went to bed early on Sunday in a good mood. It is amazing what happens to your body when you practice self care and take care of it.
My week started off with energy and motivation to be productive this week. After getting home after work on Monday, I immediately changed out of my work clothes and put on gym clothes to head to the gym. My goal is to bike 5 miles a day so I brought a magazine with me and spent an hour biking and using some of the machines. Since my work schedule has me working later at night, I always make up excuses not to go to the gym which is silly because I am always in a better mood when I do go. I even showered and made a real dinner after the gym and still got to bed on time!
At work, we were having our floor Christmas party on Wednesday so after I got back from the gym on Tuesday I made funfetti cupcakes. It was my first time baking in my apartment actually and I realized that I needed to do some shopping to get more baking tools! By the time the cupcakes were wrapped up to go to work the next day, I didn’t have time to get much else done. I quickly showered and put on my new favorite pajamas before heading to bed. I chose to go to bed on time and not washing my hair so I had to use dry shampoo before work the next morning. Every once in a while I will try a new one but I keep coming back to this dry shampoo because it works so well!
Work has been picking up which is a nice change so I have been rushing around to complete projects and consuming more caffeine than usual. On Wednesday, I had two large coffees and a few Diet Cokes so I definitely had some energy after work! Wednesday is our date night and lately, we have been walking around the city on our way back to my apartment to see the Christmas trees and lights. I talked more about it on the blog here. We walked to Rittenhouse and then to City Hall enjoying all of the Christmas lights. We made plans to actually spend time shopping at the little pop up shops this weekend so that will be fun.
So excited for the weekend! Don’t have much planned besides a few last minute Christmas errands and staying in pajamas as much as I can. Hope everyone has a good weekend 🙂