Halloween Resolutions

I never make New Year's resolutions.  It seems stupid to me to put off self improvement until an upcoming holiday.  If you need to change something, just do it.  Halloween however is a good enough holiday that it has inspired me to make two new resolutions.  The first is to start decorating my house for the holidays, and the second is to buy fewer shoes.

I really hate decorating my house for the holidays.  I feel like Joel Fleischman from Northern Exposure when he tried to put up a Christmas tree and ultimately decided he was too Jewish to really get why one would put a tree inside of a house. Last year I put up a two foot Christmas tree and that was a stretch.  I think it will require personal growth from me to decorate for the holidays, and growth is usually good.  So I am doing it.

The resolution about buying fewer shoes comes from the fact that as I went to purchase Halloween decorations, I almost decided to go shoe shopping instead.  I do NOT need more shoes.  I don't even really want more shoes.  Clearly shoe shopping has become a comfortable bad habit.  No more shoes for a while.

I went to Marshall's to get Halloween decorations because when I was dress shopping a few weeks ago, they had apothecary jars with skull-handled lids.  The labels on them said creepy things about Witch Hazel and Cures for Creeps and stuff like that. I thought to myself  "If I decorated for Halloween, I would get those."  I hoped that they were still there and when I couldn't find them, I went searching for other scary things.  I almost decided to get some Ed Hardy sheets with a skull and hearts that said "Love Kills Slowly".  They had a matching duvet cover and pillowcases and they were the most scary thing I have seen in a while.  After a few moments of fascination with the concept of terrifying sheets, I decided that the point of Halloween is to scare others and not myself.  

I found some wooden toadstools and a kind of woodland looking fall potpourri mix that seemed like it might be cute scattered around the wooden toadstools.  I also thought I might be able to put the toadstools among pine boughs for Christmas and cover two holidays with one decoration.  I wasn't sure that they were really Halloweeny, but they were at least a step in the right direction.  So I got them. Then, after purchasing them, I found the apothecary jars I had been looking for near the exit and so I ended up getting those too.  

My house is now set for the upcoming holiday!  And I didn't even look at any shoes!  I feel like a new and improved person already.