Are you ready?

We can finally be in official count down to Christmas!  Have you already started filling your home with Christmas lights and decorations?  Planning any Christmas baking this year so that the house can be filled with the lovely smell of spices and ginger?  Or are you like me, leaving things to the last minute and then scramble to get everything done in the last week leading up to Dec 25?  I promise myself every year that I would start preparing for my favourite season earlier, and in fact I have been gathering ideas for decorations and baking throughout the year!  But I still need to put my plans into action and looks like the Gingerbread Village I want to make together with our daughters will only be ready till the very last minute.

Let the countdown begin

My parents used to go to Germany for work every December and would bring home all kinds of traditional German decorations and cookies they bought from the open-air Christmas markets.  Every year, my mom would bring me a chocolate advent calendar from their trip, around one week before Christmas.  This meant I got to play “catch-up” by eating all the chocolates that were meant for Dec 1st until at least 15th all in one go!!!  All these years later, to me advent calendars always bring back the warm fuzzy feeling of Christmas with my parents.  When I got older and learned how to sew, I would make my own version of advent calendars with colorful pockets made of fabric scraps, linked together with yarn and gave them to my friends as Christmas garlands for their rooms, filled with their favourite candies.  If there is not enough time to make your own together with your kids, here are some nice options too.  Maybe your kids might have some “catching up” to do, but in this case, I am sure they would not mind!

Get Organized

Christmas holidays, with various family gatherings and commitments, always seem to fly by so quickly that we never manage to do all the activities we want as a family, such as binge-watching holiday movies together in matching Christmas pyjamas, or going to visit a Christmas market in a town nearby.  So the idea of putting together a “holiday bucket list” is super practical and maybe this year we can finally get our act together and do some of these family activities planned!  Going for a walk in the park or completing a family new year hike would be a great opportunity to burn off those extra holiday calories too!

Happy Planning!  Stay Sparky!