Thursday, November 30. 2023

Well, this is an appropriate topic for the last day of November! I have all kinds of holiday events around town written in my calendar for this weekend if I feel up to them. Do you do that, too? I am pretty good about finding out about events and then writing them down so I don’t forget. I am linking up with the Monthly Musings gals here today.

  1. Favorite Holiday Traditions – Decorating around Thanksgiving and keeping decor up until after NY Day, new pajamas on Christmas Eve, a family game on Christmas Eve, church on Eve, going to each side of the family, special foods on Eve and Day, a relaxed Christmas Day with our family
  2. Favorite holiday fashion items or accessories – now, really excited to wear my prosecco earrings and my Prosecc Ho Ho Ho shirt!
  3. Share your favorite holiday recipes – I like the idea of appetizers for one meal, breakfast casserole and monkey bread on Christmas morning, and we almost always splurge and buy a HoneyBaked ham to eat during the afternoon/evening. Tom makes his one meal a year with the ham bone – 17 bean soup.
  4. How do you celebrate the holidays – Eve church, Day with immediate family, afternoon with Tom’s family most years, and day after with my family most years
  5. Do you go see holiday lights – not really – I do like driving home from eating dinner or events and seeing the lights but we don’t do it as an event in and of itself and never really did
  6. How do you decorate your house for the holidays – I am really minimal now but my theme is kind of woodsy and evergreen
  7. Real or fake tree? – we have always had a really nice fake tree but now I am into my pencil tree
  8. Favorite holiday treats – must have pink meringue cookies, usually buckeyes (peanut butter chocolate bon bons), sometimes the saltine cracker candy or the pretzel chocolate bark, sometimes the peanut butter with Hershey Kiss cookies
  9. Do your pets get and give gifts – My Ernie gets gifts, but he does not have a credit card so we don’t expect anything from him except kisses
  10. Best tips to make holiday less stressful – One of the best books I have read is Unplug the Christmas Machine and I read this when my kids were elementary age. I also started the “something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read”. I feel like both the book and the mantra set the tone for raising appreciative and non-entitled children, which was my aim. I was very scared of materialistic children!

Here are some posts from the past:

Christmas Traditions is here and Christmas cocktails here!

What about you?

What are your musings on Christmas?

Amy

20 thoughts on “Monthly Musings”

  1. I like the idea of an appetizer meal; we never ever eat appetizers at all! I’m honestly surprised our boys aren’t crazily materialistic as they used to get so many presents from all the 4 sets of grandparents and 6 or 7 great grandparents they had growing up… to the point where I can remember them not even wanting to open gifts! But somehow none of them ever seem to want or ask for anything and are incredibly grateful for whatever they do get so we lucked out in that department.

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  2. I love Christmas pjs too…& when we are home for Christmas, I like to have apps throughout the day. I’ve always tried to follow the want, read etc too and always end up with a few more gifts too. It still feels simple enough. We’ve started adding in experiences too now that the kids understand those are special too.

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    1. I really have never bought them for myself! I love me some apps! Yes, that does seem simple enough, but you also have the pressure of wanting to surprise them and make it magical! I love experiences, too!

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  5. My favorite tradition when the boys were young was piling everyone (pus a friend or two and two dogs) in the Suburban with the seats folded down, and driving around looking at lights. We would last until they started arguing, then we’d come back home. We did this several times throughout the season!

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  10. I have three pencil trees and love all three. One is a silver one with jewel toned ornaments. One isn’t decorated at all, and the other is decorated with cream colored paper chains. We just added a 9′ tree for the living room. It’s partially decorated. I go all out with my Christmas decorations because I just love the way each nook and cranny creates its own little celebration. I know, I know, I’m a little crazy!

    I go to church on Christmas Eve (usually to ring handbells). I don’t know that I’ve ever gone on Christmas Day. Our latest tradition is to go to Winterlights at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I just wrote a blog post about it. We did miss one year during Covid not because of that but because my husband had just broken his ankle.

    Thanksgiving is always a traditional meal while Christmas is usually a “What do you want to try this year” type of situation. So, who knows what it will be this year!

    Have a wonderful weekend, Amy!

    https://marshainthemiddle.com/

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    1. Me too! I have mine plain but just with lights. I really don’t feel the need to do ornaments lately. I am sure I will again some time.
      Winterlights is a fun tradiiton. I want to do a winter lights thing at our new botanical gardens.
      Same to you!

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