xmas time in apt 407

Hello everyone!!!

As you all well know christmas is getting close... Yeyyyyy!!Especially for the shops' owners of all the world!It's their special day!Unfortunately it seems to me that people have lost a lil bit the meaning of xmas...

Ok, sarcasm aside, everybody is getting crazy about christmas' decorations..and when I say crazy I do mean it...look at this house I saw in Manchester this weekend for example :

I must say I am not a christmasy person AT ALL, when I was little there was only a guy I used to look up for xmas:

I used to embody myself with the Grinch, he was my hero, thousand times better than Santa Claus (who was seriously a boring character to me) . 

Anyway, the only time I seriously loved christmas, it was when I spent it in South Africa with my South African family and that was unbelievably awesome!If you look at this picture below, taken on xmas day of 2 years ago, you will probably understand:

This is only the kind of xmas that makes me happy, I don't know the one in winter just makes me sad ...

However, last year because of my irish flatmate Ciara the situation changed a bit. 

Ciara is the most xmasy person I have ever met in my life, she is insane about christmas. Usually she starts putting up lights and  decorating the xmas tree on the third week of November. 

Since we got as close as sisters because we very alike under many aspects and we used to do everything together, she influenced me so much with her xmas mood, she just got the power to make everybody love xmas, seriously she could make the Grinch love xmas too!

Anyway she did make me love xmas in the Irish way...DRINKING ! :) Basically in Ireland they have this tradition called 12Pubs for xmas where you go drinking in 12 different pubs on one night wearing a ridiculous outfit. At the end of that night I was without phone,wallet and a friend...yes a friend... they were gone forever (well not the friend, thank goodness she found her way back home , it is not clear how yet)...don't ask me why, and I still ended up in a club dancing till morning haha

Ciara & me

This year , I am far from home again and as much as I don't like xmas for all the commercial and consumeristic attitude towards it , I am starting to enjoy the spirit around it, the fact that it can make people united and it can create a warm atmosphere in these cold winter evenings... so my flatmates and I decided to decorate the apartment..it took hours but finally we created something that is kind of pretty, you have to remember that we are students, our budget is veeeery limited!!!

Actually it's the poorer you are the more creative you get haha

So we put up xmas songs, which in my opinion, they are all so bad but they put you in the xmas mood, and we start creating!

 SECRET SANTA roulette! 

( We had to roll the tickets at least 10times till finally each one of us got a different name!)

 Xmas lights

 these words mean "xmas" in the four different languages spoken in our apt: Italian , Dutch, German and French

Us at the end of the job (finally after 3hs) in our pjs 

From the left: Me, Eva, Nana, Carlotta, Penélope

Soooo Merry xmas to everyone!

Hope you'll enjoy the presents but mostly the food (especially if you are in Italy :)) and the love of who is sharing this special day with you or is far but thinking about you!

Chiara