Christmas this year is already looking very different for Dan and I. First off, we’re certainly not used to it being in the 60s in December. The biggest difference though is being away from our family. We won’t be going back to New Hampshire this year to celebrate with everyone. Instead, we’ll be staying in Arizona and doing what we can to make it special.

As I’ve talked about many times, travel nursing necessitates some serious minimalism. This means that we didn’t bring the vast majority of our Christmas decorations. We won’t be getting a tree for the first time ever which is a bit sad, but there’s just not a good way to do it. We’d have to buy not just a tree, but another tree stand, tree skirt, lights, ornaments, etc. all of which we already have back in New Hampshire in our storage unit.

This year we opted for a simple Christmas cactus! We found it at Trader Joe’s and couldn’t resist. So that will be our $12 Christmas tree this year 🙂 We’re definitely disappointed in some ways, but have tried to be intentional about the ways we can still celebrate and make it feel like the Christmas season we’re used to.

• Super simple, but I’ve been diffusing some nice Christmas scents!
• We dried some orange slices to make a garland to hang – we did this last year too for Thanksgiving!
• Our little Christmas cactus
• For the actual morning of Christmas, I’m planning to make my mom’s side’s classic Christmas breakfast (hot cocoa, kielbasa, and french toast, probably along with some fruit)
• My grandpa, Bumpy, gifted us his grandfather’s menorah to bring with us along with some beautiful candles so we can celebrate Hannukah (this year Hannukah actually overlaps with Christmas)
• Lots of Christmas tunes and movies of course 😉
• My grandparents, Beannie & Bumpy, have a tradition of hanging beautiful crotched snowflakes in their windows at Christmastime and this year Beannie gifted us some to bring with us
• A little different, but my mom gave us a few different kinds of advent calendars that I’ve set up as a kind of decoration as well
• Dan got me some beautiful taper candles and candlesticks as an early Christmas gift that I set out on the table (they may be too pretty to light!)

Thankfully, we were able to see almost all of our family for Thanksgiving this year and with some of them we celebrated a dual Thanksgiving & Christmas. We worked hard to have everyone’s Christmas presents ready to go before we left for Arizona so that they could either open their gifts at Thanksgiving with us, or save them for Christmas Day.

Check out the reel we made of our simple, but special Christmas 2022 decorations 🙂

what are your favourite ways to decorate for Christmas?