I’m Breakin’ Out the Spode

Hey there!  Thanks for finding your way here today.  🙂  I have a confession to make… I put up our Christmas decorations last night!  Grey and I will do the tree together on Friday, but the other decor is mostly finished.  I have a few things that I want to add.  It was so fun to work on it last night, with the Christmas music blaring and all of the inspiration flowing.  I kept my promise to myself this year, which was that whenever the mood struck me, I would decorate the house — not before, and not holding myself to a day on the calendar that I deemed “appropriate.”

I am a firm believer that you can celebrate Thanksgiving and all that is wonderful about it and still have your Christmas decorations up.  Both holidays are about love, joy, family, creating memories…  This is the first year I have had our decorations up before Thanksgiving and they are already making me feel so happy.

Back in May, we started organizing our house a bit and we purchased this hook set from IKEA.  Even then I was so looking forward to hanging up our little Spode mugs.

Spode is a big deal in our family.  Every Christmas Eve, my whole (huge!) family gathers at my Grammie and Gramps’ house and we have a big dinner and celebrate together.  There are Spode dinner plates for every person.  We even have clip-on candles that get lit so everyone has a tiny candlelit dinner plate.  I remember as a little kid I felt like this was super special — a very sweet way to make the place setting feel extra personal.  Christmas Eve is truly the best night of my entire year because of my incredible grandparents and the traditions that they have instilled in all of us.  It’s a night I will never take for granted.

Grey and I have two larger cafe mugs that we keep in the cupboard for morning coffee and, of course, hot cocoa.  We like to buy one container of specialty hot chocolate each year that we savor.  We make it over the stovetop and I make homemade whipped cream, and then sometimes we even shave chocolate on top!  Gotta thoroughly enjoy the good stuff.  😉 The rest of the time it is just Swiss Miss around here, which, let’s be honest, is so good, too!

I’m working on my Spode collection little by little each year.  Our families have been so sweet to gift us so much already!  When we bought our first home two years ago, I received some Spode as a housewarming gift, and then more for Christmas.  Some of it is vintage, too!  I love that.

My mom has Christmas dishes that she pulls out each season, and I love them so much.  Christmas morning brunch is always served on her special dishes and it’s part of the tradition that warms my heart!  I love collecting the Spode dishes in hopes that someday when we have kids, I can keep the tradition of special dishes this time of year alive and help to create some more wonderful family memories.

Do you have any seasonal traditions?  What are they?  Do you collect holiday dishes, too?