Decorating for Christmas like a Domestic Hussy!

Ho, ho, ho indeed. It's that time of year where I complete my transformation into a full domestic hussy. It is time to do two very important things. Decorate this home for Christmas or the holidays or whatever and gossip. Couples counseling, anxious attachment, wedding stuff, you know, dead people, spirits. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, it's just a nice time to be cozy. I want to be cozy together. This is the first thing I want to do. In my home growing up, my mom always put like a long garland on the stairs and in this very cool old home, I thought it would be pretty chill. I do feel like it's going to be one of those things where it's like, it looks simpler than it will end up being. I have a feeling that I'm going to be immediately annoyed by the end of doing this. Oh, oh, okay. All right. That part already broke off. I will say this. I have been having pretty intense dizzy spells since last night, like the room spinning. I have a feeling it's benign. A lot of dizziness is just benign, but it is very random and disorienting. The only advice online was like, it should be fine as long as you're, you know, not at risk of falling somewhere. So we got a lot of ladders to climb today. A lot of stairs to go up and down. If something happens, let the people know I died doing what I love. Oh, I like this wrap y'all. Oh, I like that wrap. I am very excited to decorate in this home. It's the first Christmas in this home. It's old and it's got very like a Christmas carol vibes, you know, dead people, spirits coming around to tell you everything you did wrong and why you're a bad person, that kind of thing. I think that's fun. Oh, that's lovely. That's splendid. That's looking really good. I really like that. Made a little tea. See what Justin's doing. Justin's doing something cute. What are you doing, Justin? I'm relaxing my barber jacket after about four years of building up to it. We're all doing arts and crafts. Okay. I don't actually know if I'm going to be able to get Christmas lights up on this thing. I'm not going to make you watch me figure it out. We'll just do a little transition. Oh my God. The cat did it. The cat did it. You want to look at the lights? Let's take a tour of the lights. Justin, come admire what I did. Come look at it. Oh, beautiful. Oh, what's that expression? Nothing more. It was beautiful. Okay. All right. Let's improvise a little on those compliments. Oh, it's Christmas morning. This came out really well. I just got this garland from Etsy. It's a faux garland, and I feel very picky about faux garlands. I feel like there's, I can't even describe it, but there's certain faux branches I do and don't like, certain colors. I don't like the ones that lay super flat. I like them to have a little bit of body to them. This one came out great. I do wish I'd ordered a longer one, a little longer. I could have ordered like three more and then wrapped it all the way around the banister up top, on the floor up top too. I'm pretty happy with this though. Yo, this is a cute opportunity for a thumbnail. This looks like a cute thumbnail to me. Got to get the face in. Got to get the moneymaker in. Is that a weird thumbnail to take? It's my Grinch face. Look, I make a really good Grinch face, I think. Pretty good. We're doing the mantle. We're doing the mantle right now. I don't know what to do with these mantles. There's three mantles in this house, and they're like boarded up. I got more of these garlands. The same garland I went on, got on the stairs. You can get them in custom lengths. This one is like a six foot one. Wow, we did it. Look at that. I feel good about that. Look how it just has some nice girth to it immediately. You can bend it a little. I feel very good about these garlands. We're going to hang some cute stuff up. I hope these are my stockings. Yeah. Oh, Lord. Little hat for you. Oh, you're so cute. I'm obsessed with these stockings. Wow, I literally love to see them. Okay, if you watched my vlog last year, I got these stockings. I let Justin pick out his own. I think it's beautiful. I actually invested in some nice quality hand knitted thick boys. Look at the heck at this. This is the cutest stocking I've ever seen. I'll link where I got them. How did I hang them though? That's a question. I love when he just whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack. You're a kook. Okay, I have to figure out how I can hang these. Someone go watch the old vlog and figure out how I hung these. All right, I'm going to get it up there. Just a little piece of ribbon that can hook onto the back of this. Think this works? Yeah, bro. Okay, you know, we got to slap it with some fairy lights. How quickly is Whitley going to just pull these stockings off of the mantle? I asked you guys what you wanted me to gossip about in this video. Somebody asked, what do you do about a friend who keeps getting back together with their ex? It's such a random question, but I want to talk about it. I feel like it's a good one. I was that person who kept getting back with their toxic ex. I've talked about this before. My long-term relationship, we broke up seven times. Six of those times, he broke up with me, and then he'd want to get back together. Him bringing up with me ultimately was the nicest thing he ever did to me because I wasn't going to do it. I was trapped in this thing. But through that, this was several, several years, my friends were so annoyed. Some were more explicit about it than others. Some people made comments. Some people made really unhelpful comments and said some things to me that were just so hurtful, I've never forgotten it. It's like, I've never really forgotten it. Just not being able to have empathy. And then some people made comments that were helpful, but really none of those comments were able to get me out of a toxic relationship where we broke up and got back together. But I was able to finally walk away, even after he broke up with me the last time, he wanted to get back together again. And at that point, I was able to not want to. And all of that, that was not because of things my friends said or things anyone else said. It was just because I had to get tired enough of the bullshit. There's that saying, you repeat the lesson until you learn it. And for whatever reason, that was a lesson that I really had to struggle through for whatever reason. If you, when you're watching somebody really struggle through something, whether it's like a real messy relationship or any number of other crises, it's like, you can't force someone to learn this lesson, this complicated lesson, that's probably connected to something really deep and really old in them. So I feel like having been that person, I think the things that were most helpful were friends who kept the line of communication open so that they were a safe person that I felt like when things went badly, I felt like I could talk to them about it. As opposed to, if you know that just everyone's annoyed at you and everyone's judging you, then you're not going to go talk to them when you're having doubts about the relationship, or at least you won't go talk to those people. I would talk to the people who didn't make me feel judged. And also, if you think everyone's judging you and everyone hates you, then it almost can lock you into the relationship more because it's like, oh, well, I've burned every bridge for this relationship. Nobody even wants me if I leave this. Now this really is the only thing I can have. So I'm not saying like, if you really can't tolerate being around this friend who's going in and out of toxic, take your space. Definitely take your space. But if you want to be involved and you want to be like, what can I do, if anything, I think the best thing you can do is just be patient, know that they're on a journey and you don't have to understand it. And they probably don't like it either. And just be that person who can be nonjudgmental and feel safe for them to open up to. You know what I mean? But if that person is just annoying the ---- out of you too much and you can't control your anger, and I relate to that feeling sometimes, then you're probably not able to be that person for them. And that's okay. You can just take your space and try not to take it out on them. Just take your space if you need to. Dang it. I wish I had two more lights over here. Okay, JK, I fixed it. He's eating all my fairy lights. All right, we got to put up these little dudes. My little light up houses. I love these guys. We nestled them in. Pretty cute, huh? Very cute. Yeah. I don't know if I showed these last year. I think I actually went and got these like at a post Christmas sale. I'm never organized to buy like discounted Christmas stuff after Christmas for the first time, for the first time I did. And that's how you know I'm becoming a domestic. And then these are my favorites. These are little German smokers. We always grew up with them in my house. There's different little like vintage statuettes. You just put a little incense guy right in there. And then the smoke comes out their mouth. And they're all usually like different like St. Nicholas or other little guys. Come on. Adorable. This one's got a bunch of like little gifts. They always have a pipe on the back. Whoops. He's got more things he's bringing on his back. Cute. Oh, come on. It's adorable. this. This is what my living room usually looks like. Let me show you what I usually do before I film. I usually clean it up. Like I don't want you to see this chair out random style. I got old coffee, computer. I usually put the computer away. I'd rather pretend that I just do all my work on handwritten sheets of paper. It's what I always do. These are the lies. I don't like a charger being seen. Straighten this out. Manically light a candle. Oh, what was that? Did you see that spark? Fix these. Refold this blanket. I just want it to look cute to everyone. There. There we go. I guess that's not that big of a deal, but I just want everyone to be happy. Excellent. If you're new here, this is not my actual furniture. This is the bull furniture I have here while all my actual furniture gets reupholstered. Literally, this is the sofa for my patio. This is my patio sofa, but I got a call from the upholsterer like 10 minutes ago saying that the furniture is done. The upholstery is done. So probably in the next video or so, it'll be here. I want to hang out these little wreaths. They're just faux wreaths in the windows. I put these in the bay windows in my last place. I really, really like them though. Very worth it. I got like a huge pack for like probably all the windows in this house. Let's see. Oh, that was easy. There was already a hook on it from last year. Okay. Again, I don't know why I thought this was going to take like 30 minutes. Nice and pliable. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's perfect. Got to fluff a little. I like that. I like it. He is such a good Christmas cat. People asked, what was the story with Whitmas? Whitmas? His name is Whitley. His Christian name is Whitley, but we call him Whitmas. Whitman. Rat cat. Rat rat. Kit Kat. Smooch him. He sleeps right here next to me. We do spooning. He loved Justin so much. He worked with him in the office. He beautiful. He not so smart, but he beautiful. Oh, we come into the window. Okay. Let me tell you what. Whitley has only just recently started like looking out windows. It took him a while to like get used to being in a new place, but now he loved it. And now he knows that we're not going to eat him. So like first he had to like secure the perimeter indoors and make sure that this was like a safe place. Yeah. Get that. Yeah. Oh, wow. Get that. Get that. And now that he's decided it's safe inside, he's only just started looking out windows, which like cats love that. So he's just about to discover all these new favorite things. Okay. Now this is by far the best decorating choice I made last year for Christmas, which was battery operated candles in the window. I like the real deal. I like the real candles, but I also like not setting my house on fire. The window, blah, blah, blah. Just feels like I really could. Candles crooked. Candles crooked. Feels like I shouldn't put a candle there. I love it. It's like the soldiers coming home from war. Come on. Oh, glory hallelujah. And it's Chelsea's dayo. Am I right? Am I right about that or what? Oh, please. Oh, for the love of the Virgin Mary, please. Yes. Yeah. I really like that. Okay. Oh yeah. Oh, come on. First of all, a lot of this is decor that like my mom would do. She always had the little lights in the windows and I just think it's so cozy. It makes me excited to like come home and you're pulling up to your house and you can see stuff in the window. I love that so much. Come on. I feel like these wreaths could do with a little ribbon on them. Let's do it. Whoa, hold on. I totally forgot I had these. These are a couple of new items I got this year. Yes. Yes. I love this. I got two of these little felt garlands and I really like doing the Christmas colors a little bit darker. Like I like kind of this burgundy and I like this softer forest green. We've got a cream. It just like, it gets a little more at the vintage to me. It was an Etsy seller and I'm pretty sure that you could customize the colors of the balls if I'm remembering correctly, but I'm happy about this because I feel like this needs something more. I literally forgot I ordered this. Why is that already so cute? I just draped one little corner and it's already so cute. Oh my god. I love that. It's so stupid. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot, but this is fun. It's fun. All right. That's cute. Come on. I love that. I freaking love that. That's adorable. Yeah. Come on, dude. That's adorable. Oh my god. I love that. I'm an idiot. I love that. Yes. I love this. I freaking love that. Spank it up, bro. I feel like I'm definitely still exploring, discovering, evolving my Christmas decor taste. I feel like that has to evolve for everyone the same way that just like home decor does, but it takes, I almost feel like it takes longer because I'm only working on it like a week, a year, and I'm not like thinking ahead to like look at ideas and options and whatever, but I do like, that's why I kind of like curating it slowly. Like I don't have, I don't have enough Christmas decor to decorate the whole house, but I got these new garlands. La la la. Yeah. I like doing it just a piece at a time. Kit kat kitty kat worldwide, kitty cat wo, rat worldwide, kitty kitty cat, kitty cat worldwide, kitty cat, roddy rat worldwide, kitty kitty kitty cat yay oh, shut up. Shut up. Silence. Okay, I also got this little like garland of jingle bells. They really jingle, they won't shut up. This is not actually vintage, but it's kind of got like a vintagey look to it. I like all these little stupid shapes. I feel like they're stupid bell shapes. They're like kind of primitive bells. And by stupid, I mean like I like them. Oh yeah, come on, it's freaking bells. You guys are gonna need to shut up though. That is too much. Shut up. Oh my God. Wow, that is truly a jingle bell. Okay, that was like pretty annoying for a second. But now that they're quiet, I like them. The shot is probably too blown out to see, but I did update my wreaths with my brown ribbon. This is his perch, you wanna sit on your perch? Look out the window, dude, be cute. Nah. Okay, tree time. Somebody tell me what to do about this wire. I hate this. This is just like, I think it's for the internet. Run up along here, it's horrible. This part we could theoretically paint to match the walls. I guess we could paint this brown to match the wall there. So bad. Hello? I hope everybody's really appreciating my festive pajamas. Pretty cute, pretty effortlessly chic. I actually, I'll say this. I don't wear pajamas to sleep. I sleep in the ink room. But I was tired of like, not having a cute lounge set, especially around the holidays. You're like opening gifts, you're making food before you change into your like dress outfit. You're lounging, you're whatever. Yeah, I've been wearing these nonstop. These are from Skims, they are sponsoring. They're the softest things you've ever felt. They have a little vintage deer print. We got a pocket. There's a little piping detail, like all the finishing touches. It's got a like elastic waistband. And then it's just flowy. If I may say this, I think it's pretty cute on the tush, okay? I'll say it. They're just very, very flattering. Even the cut of like, often I don't like a long sleeve shirt. I feel like sometimes it makes me look boxy or something. But like, just look, look how nicely it like hangs. Like it just still gives me shape here, even though it's loose. I feel like it falls so nicely. Anyway, big endorsement. If you need to get a gift for somebody, a holiday gift, these are not just regular pajamas. These are the softest pajamas you've ever felt. Can endorse 1 million percent. I feel so confident about telling you to gift this to somebody or gift it to yourself. Okay, I've been wearing them kind of nonstop. Oh, I have another set from them too. I think in the color cypress. I was wearing it in the video about my villain origin story of how I started on YouTube. They also have like a crop top version of this. So picture this. Picture a really cute crop. Very sweet. Yeah, I just haven't gotten out of these. And I think they're just like pretty effortlessly chic. We gotta do the butt pump. Gotta do that. Let's give it a spin. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. That's holiday. The Skims Holiday Shop is officially open and I recommend these PJs 100%. Click the link in the description and you can shop the Skims sleep sets this holiday. And if you love me, let them know I sent you. After checkout, you can just select YouTube and my name in the dropdown. Ooh, let's talk about more gossip. Somebody asked if my, what'd they say? Has your anxious attachment in my relationship improved since moving in with Justin? It definitely has, but not because we moved in together. You can definitely move in with someone and still be very anxiously attached. I think some people think like, oh, once I'm able to keep an eye on them, then I'll trust them. That's not trusting. That's tracking. That's not trusting. It's improved though because we've done a lot of therapy. We go to couples therapy, which everyone should do. I wanna talk about it because I think I'm still weirdly stigmatized. And you know, back in the day, individual therapy was really stigmatized, but now we've gotten over that. And it's the same with couples therapy. There is not a couple who can't benefit from talking about conflict, talking about how they communicate. Yeah, and the best time to do couples therapy is before there's major problems. Most people go to couples therapy when they're like, it's a last resort, and the next step is getting a divorce. That's a really tough time to go. I mean, still go, but it's definitely better to go when you're in a pretty good place. Granted, we had something specifically to work on for sure. For me, it was my anxious attachment and being better at trusting. Trusting myself, trusting the relationship, blah, blah, blah, communicating. Justin had his own things to work on because everybody does in a relationship. So that was the first thing that got us into couples counseling. But now our counselor keeps being like, well, you guys keep coming in and you don't really even have anything to talk about. There's no glaring issues. We just kinda chat like, do you wanna wrap this up? But we're like, no, let's keep it on the calendar. We go less frequently now, but we just have it on the calendar every two months or every six weeks or something, which is really nice because then if something arises, a conflict comes up, you know you have something on the calendar where you're gonna talk about it. Yeah, it's the best thing ever. But I've definitely lived with a partner in the past and still been anxiously attached. Living with a partner, I don't think solves that. Cute. People write into me a lot about anxious attachment because I've talked about it a lot on the channel, just feeling insecure in a dynamic. I made one whole video about our meeting Justin and how the relationship changed me in a positive way and stretched me in a positive way. And then a whole separate one about my whole process of healing through anxious attachment, which really was like my mind to own. It's looking cute in here. And we're both, you know, we're in individual therapy and I love therapy. Yeah, but the couples part is helpful because then we could communicate through like, like it's my thing to own, but it was helpful to be like, and this is a good way to support me or this is like a good way we can communicate through it. Like one thing we discovered in couples counseling was like one of Justin's like MOs is that when he's stressed about something, he like wouldn't really talk about it. Then he would just get really quiet and just kind of shut down and less talkative. And that made me really anxious. I was like, what the is going on? Does he love me less? Is he, what's he thinking? Like, he must be steaming on something. Like, is he mad at me? And then in therapy, we were able to like communicate and understand that he was like, well, that's how I deal with stress. I don't want to put stress on other people. Like, I don't think it's helpful for me to like talk about stressful things to other people. It'll just stress them out more, especially if you're already stressed, la la la. So I'm just keeping to myself. And I was able to be like, that actually has the opposite effect. Like it makes me more uneasy. You can share these things with me. I want to know that when you're actually mad at me, you will tell me and I'll know. And when you're upset about something else, you can flag it and I can give you space and I'll know. So just things like that, like little invisible ways, unintentional ways that like, you can like co-build anxiety in a relationship. You never know what like rules people have privately established in their mind of like, this is how you deal with this. Maybe it's based on their own, you know, it's usually based on people's home life or family or past relationships they had. But there's different rules in all relationships. Look at this freaking throwback. My mom made this. This is just a little face mask. This is 2020. Remember that time? These are more little straw ornaments. They're so cute, come on. Little straw guys. These are like classic German ornaments. We had these, ones like these growing up. If you're new here, my dad was in the military. So we lived in Germany for a while. Then also I have like, my family heritage is largely German. It's an angel. Look how cute that is. I love these little straw ornaments. I think they're just like a fun texture to add in. What other drama do we want to talk about? Ooh, people asked a lot about wedding stuff. Picked like a venue. We have our photographer. I got a dress. And one thing that I chose to do was invest in a wedding planner, which like, it will cost a little more money, but they're wedding planners of like all different price ranges and stuff. And that was something that I really wanted to spend my money on. To me, like, I want it to be a great event for everyone who comes and like invests in this celebration and this relationship and blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, if you travel, I want it to be a great time for you. And then the thing I want for myself is to like not be stressed. That's my gift to myself as much as possible. And I'm really not a planner. A lot of people have been like, you should be your wedding planner. You'd be great at it. False. I'd be a good wedding decorator. But wedding planning, that's event planning. I am really bad at event planning. I would rather spend a lot less money on flowers. Most people, the largest part of their budget goes to flowers, okay? So the way we thought about it was like, okay, if we're gonna spend money on a wedding planner to like oversee and coordinate, make sure things go correctly and to relieve some stress, then we're gonna spend a lot less money on flowers. And instead, we just chose a venue that was already like beautiful. Like it has a garden, it has nature around. So you don't have to bring all the nature in. So that was basically my MO is like choosing a place where it's like the flower's already there because there's a garden and it's just already beautiful. And then I wanna spend that money instead on basically the opportunity to not be as stressed, which I feel really good about. I think everybody has different priorities. But I do think I'll make, I'll probably make like one video either on like planning wedding design, which I haven't even like fully figured out yet, or maybe just like generally how I made decisions for the wedding, like what matters, what doesn't, where you spend money, where you don't. And I can just share my thought process. I think it would apply to anyone of any budget. You know, just deciding like, like what are the things that make a wedding actually fun and an event versus like impressive. I don't think that an impressive wedding is the same as a fun wedding, you know? Oh, this one is one of my favorites. Oh, that's me and my dad. Oh my God. Ho, ho, ho indeed, that's me and my dad. Cute. Oh my gosh, my skirt, my Christmas skirt. This is the Christmas tree skirt that I DIYed last year. I like it, I keep it. Is the cat gonna eat our tree? I mean, he might eat the tree. Justin and I are actually going away tonight. We're going to Paris to visit one of my very best and very oldest friends who lives there with her partner and her baby. And I'm so excited and I'm probably running out of time because I like need to pack and get on a plane. But it's gonna be really nice to come home to all this cuteness. But we're going, we're going to Paris. And actually, I speak a little French. I studied it at school for many years. It's been a while since I spoke it. Eh? J'ai oublié beaucoup de vocabulaire. Mais, how do you say? Ça me fait plaisir. Ça me plaît de parler encore. Je vais essayer. Okay, there we go. It's been a long time since I spoke French. We got a lot going on on this tree. I don't wanna hang anything too low because of the Kit Kat. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, dude. I also don't have a tree topper. I mean, I think I'll live. I think we'll survive. Girl, it's looking adorable. I have to go like do a bunch more work and then pack and then get on a plane. Plus I need to play catch the worm with Whitley. Come on, dude. He can jump so high. Look at this. So close, you're so close. You can do it. I've seen you do it. Don't get discouraged. Nice, isn't that insane? That was like up to my shoulder. That's crazy. Anyway, thanks for hanging out. I'll see you soon. Yeah, that's a good guy. You like that, dude? Yeah, it's good.