Holiday

Last year, I threw my first ever "Galentine's Day" party.  "What's Galentine's Day??," you ask. Source Don't worry, I didn't know anything about it until I binge-watched Parks and Rec while I was pregnant with my second son last year. Once I saw it, I knew I had to do it. An excuse to host some of my favorite gals? Yes please! Here is what I did. First, a couple weeks before the party, I emailed all the husbands, fiances, or boyfriends of the women who were coming with these questions and strict instructions NOT to tell their partners: What is your favorite sport? Where did you go on your first date? What is your favorite dinner that she makes? What is her favorite pastime or...

The holidays for our family, like most families, are a little manic. From the time we carve the turkey on Thanksgiving day until we cut the King Cake on 12th night, we are filled to the brim with family events, eating, running from here to there, more eating, staying off schedule, not keeping up with laundry, opening presents, still more food, and lack of sleep. By the time mid-January rolls around (I'm a resolution procrastinator), I'm ready to get my life in order by de-cluttering, refocusing, and de-stressing. This is usually when I detox. I don't mean the celebrity detox where you drink cayenne water for 3 days. I'm speaking of a life cleanse. To cleanse means to rid yourself of things that...

I am not a child of divorce, but my son is. This is a lifestyle that has become new and unfamiliar to me. Heartbreaking at times. It has its moments. I am learning as the years go by. It’s not the life I would have wished for my child to experience, but it is the life I chose for him, for us. We persevere. We share the holidays. For my son, this is all he knows. His parents were divorced when he was an infant. So he has always had two families; it’s what he knows and it’s all he remembers. So as the temperature drops and I begin hear the jingle of the music, I anticipate the reminder of what his...

I have been eyeing the beautiful red wreaths at Target for the past several years. Don't ask me why I never bought one. I guess partly because I didn't want to spend $30 on something that I would only get to enjoy one month out of the year, partly because I'm usually grocery shopping and I see it as I pass by in a hurry to get to the baby aisles. Regardless, I never did bite the bullet but the other day I was in Hobby Lobby and an idea hit me. I would make my own DIY wreath. I love crafting so this would be fun! It's super simple. You need only 4 items. A 12" floral foam circle -...

We never made an "official" decision that we would keep the holidays simple, it just sort of happened. Like most couples, early in our marriage our income and our time were both very limited. Even a few years later when we became parents, I was in graduate school, scraping together enough money to pay the bills and spending most of my "extra" time with my nose buried in books or running statistics. Going all out for holidays just wasn't financially an option and we didn't have a lot of time or energy to build complex traditions. Perhaps a lot of the reason we have a simple holiday season is just a reflection of our own experiences growing up. When I think back over the many...