Comfort and Joy

I hope you had a warm and wonderful Christmas!

We made some big changes this year and while it felt all wrong in the beginning, the result was a very peaceful and lovely holiday.

1. No handmade gifts or cards. This was the most difficult change for me and it caused a lot of guilt, but the amount of stress from beginning projects too late and frantically struggling to finish in time vanished and made the holiday much saner for everyone. Making some new ornaments, felted stockings and of course some soft trees early on helped alleviate my anxiety.

2. Four kinds of cookies instead of eight. Friends and family still received plenty of homemade love, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that they were well received unlike some of my past handmade gifts.

3. No travel. We hosted my husband's family before Christmas and my family after. This will become tradition. Not having to rush from place to place and spend hours on the road saved money and sanity. Getting to laze about drinking coffee and watching the babes play after the gift frenzy....priceless.

4. Santa hung the stockings in the kids' rooms after he filled them. What a thoughtful guy. This bought me and the Mr. some time to get dressed and wipe the sleep out of our eyes before the big show. This too, will become tradition.