Happy Monday!

I hope you had a great weekend. Tj and I ran around all weekend trying to get ready for our upcoming trip and Christmas. I was trying to find the perfect present for Tj but I didn't find anything I thought he would love. I also wanted to get all my packing done but I'm not quite there yet.

I know not everyone loves the holidays as much as I do. It can be overwhelming and expensive and lonely or too commercialized. Everything is heightened during the holidays. Happiness and excitement, but also sadness too. We feel the losses of our loved ones even more and it’s even more obvious than in everyday life that someone who should be there is missing. You might regret spending too much money or feel too busy to have time to enjoy this time of year.

There are lots of reasons why Christmas might not be your favourite time of year. A few weeks ago I wrote about some things you can do to get in the holiday spirit, and today I thought I'd share some of my top tips to get you through the hectic times:

Online shopping - Save yourself the hassle of crowded stores and malls and do your shopping online. I find a lot of stores have free shipping and returns. Put on some cozy PJs, pour yourself a drink, and shop from the comfort of your own home.

Don't do things for the sake of doing it - If you don't have time to send Christmas cards or wrap presents then don't. Buy gift bags and be done with it. The perfect example of this to me is a Christmas tree. When I was young, we would sometimes have two Christmas trees! One beautiful angel tree in the living room and a tree in the basement playroom with all of my favourite old homemade ornaments. And then there were some years when I first moved to Toronto and Jacob had football in Texas and had to leave on Boxing Day. And so we would just put up a little tiny tree. No one would be around to enjoy it so why go through the trouble of setting it up just to take it back down. Makes perfect sense to me. Don't over complicate things just because you feel like you have to do something.

Not everything has to be perfect - I feel the pressure sometimes to make everything perfect and be so organised so that everything goes right. But I've learned that sometimes you can have the best time when things don't go to plan (like baking disasters haha). Sometimes there just isn't enough time to do all the things you wanted to do. And at the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter.

Don't go overboard with presents - I hate exchanging presents just because I feel like I have to. To me, Christmas isn't about who can buy the most or spend the most. I think gift giving is about spoiling your loved ones once or twice a year and getting them something they would never buy themselves. And while it's tempting to want to buy them the world, that doesn't mean spend beyond your means. There are lots of other ways to make the holidays special.

The main reason I love Christmas is the family time. I love that we take time out of our day to day lives to all get together and be silly and eat too much. I love the games and the songs and the cookies. My favourite Christmas memories aren't the presents that I received, although there are some pretty memorable ones there. I remember the excitement of Christmas Eve mass and getting to see all my school friends at church. Or opening all the presents and then throwing paper in the air and on the dog until he barked like crazy. It's about that moment where everything felt so hectic and then it all comes together and it's just fun. I remember the time my uncle tricked my cousin's boyfriend with the fart machine while we all laughed. Or when my family played a game called LCR (left, centre, right) that I've tried to replicate with other people but was never as fun as it was that one time. I remember when Jacob was little and he was so excited for Santa that he would giggle hysterically and couldn't sleep. And then I remember when he got a little bit older and I had to wake him up because he was a teenager and slept like a log.

I love Christmas because it's the time of year where I feel like maybe magic does exist and maybe Christmas miracles can be real. To me, it's about finding the fun in the craziness and embracing my favourite time of year.

Have a great week :)