Not a Creature Was Stirring

 

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse . . .

 or a grandpa & his grandson :), :)

 

~  Story time by the Christmas tree ~

 The Christmas season at my happy home has unfolded in a somewhat laid back manner.  Decorating, while still plentiful, was scaled back to the most meaningful pieces.  Many treasures remained in the attic and others were donated to local thrift shops.  

I guess what it boils down to is at this stage of life I'm working towards re-thinking many of the holiday traditions with the goal of making them work for our present circumstances.  Sometimes it's easy to keep doing things the way they've been done for years and years because, after all, it's tradition.  Sometimes, however, those traditions can cause exhaustion and/or undue stress which is something we really don't want to be part of the plan if it can be prevented.

 So, this year, I did my best to search for what really matters and put my energy there.

At times I felt a bit guilty about trimming back the traditions.

Particularly when it came to the cookie baking tradition.

What was once an all day event morphed into a few hours baking cranberry orange bread and a double batch of one type of cookie.

The look on my son's face when I told him there would be no candy cane cookies this year made me feel the old guilty feelings.

I went back and forth with myself thinking there's been candy cane cookies every year, there has to be candy cane cookies... it's tradition.  On the other hand, candy cane cookies are time consuming and when the free time presented itself, I didn't feel like making them so I let go of the guilt trip and skipped making them this year.  Next year could be different.  Years ago if I had read this I would have thought "what kind of selfish mother wouldn't make her son's favorite cookies at Christmas?"  Years ago I was younger and had more energy.  Ho Ho!!

  Anyhow, I suppose I'm sharing this here because I feel the need to explain my absence in the last few weeks.  I guess I unintentionally scaled back on my computer time too.  Funny how at one time December was my favorite time to share things on my blog.  I love Christmastime and all that goes with it.  For whatever reason I was happy to scale things back this year and found that if I spent too much time in blogland it became easy to second guess my laid back approach to Christmas and feel the need to do more and hurry up about it.  I guess I'm just trying to say that there is so much beautiful inspiration out there and I love it all.  This year it just seemed a bit overwhelming to me so I spent more time unplugged.

Once again next year could be a whole different story, but for this year I'm quite happy with this slower pace.

My hope is that each of you are enjoying the pace that is right for you and your loved ones.  

I'll most likely be carrying out this laid back intentional Christmas season until the new year so I'll take this opportunity to wish you a very meaningful and Merry Christmas.