There is a battle that takes place in our house every year, where lines are drawn and sides are taken. Come mid-October, Mister and I already sizing each other up. Finally one day he makes the announcement, “I’m going to the basement!”

And so begins the seasonal decorating.

Growing up, my family wasn’t big into the holidays. Christmas was the big dinner for us, and aside from that we never really had much in the way of traditions. But with Mister’s family, there are little rituals everywhere and the changing of the seasons is marked constantly. There’s the change from baseball to football to hockey. There’s summer decorations, fall decorations, fall/thanksgiving, fall/halloween, fall/US Thanksgiving, and Christmas- just from September to December! His mom’s house is a tightly run ship where the chance to throw a little party or make things just a little more special is an opportunity to be jumped at.

When we started dating it was like accidentally side stepping into a universe where TV mom’s were real, and where I had been elected Chief Anthropologist. And the decorating thing? Turns out it doesn’t skip a generation.

To date, Mister’s biggest decorating soft spots are as follows:

1. Elaborate Halloween front yard graveyards
2. Christmas mini-villages, the miniature ones you can get at craft stores

So far the negotiations have allowed that we have some indoor halloween decorations, and whatever Mister wants to do outside is fine with me so long as sound effects are kept to a minimum (I don’t want to anger the crazy neighbours- see incident #1 & #2 for new readers) and that it’s not all rigged up before the week of Halloween. I have to admit that his self control has been impressive, especially since we’re only on our 2nd year out of apartments & he used to build theatre sets.

While I might not be ready to welcome a miniature Christmas village into my home yet (ever? So waspy. Really.) at the same time I’m starting to see the value in starting our own traditions. If we don’t start them now, when will we? After four years of living together we still don’t really have any proper ones, so this year I’m officially kicking some off:

• Girls Pumpkin Carving Party – I love carving pumpkins! Last year I made Princess Peach & Bowser & the year before I made a jolly roger, snow white & an orc. Every year my girls tend to end up at my house, so I’m making it a tradition. This year I even pre-gutted the pumpkins found Halloween sippy cups for our wine. Because we’re classy.
• Abstaining from Pumpkin Spice anything – I always get excited for the seasonal lattes at Starbucks and then the minute that I see that pumpkin spice makes my soy latte orange, I remember I like Gingerbread, not pumpkin. It’s always so disappointing.
• Sloppy Joes for dinner – We almost never make sloppy joes, but on Halloween it always seems to come up. So a sloppy joe/tofu sloppy joe feast it is!
• Toasted Pumpkin Seeds – I’m a salt-o-holic, and the next week of pumpkin seeds is going to be delicious. Four pumpkins worth of seeds! Life is good.

The autumn wreath on our door is definitely a slippery slope- or at least a sign of things to come for our front yard. But maybe starting small with wreaths, graveyards in our front yard, and sloppy joes, is the way big traditions start. Maybe 10 years from now, we’ll still be carving pumpkins the week of Halloween, with our significant others & little ones. Maybe we’ll all move back to town, and knit ourselves into our own little extended family.

You never know what can happen when you plant a seed. Even when, or maybe especially when, that seed is a sippy cup full of wine.