Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Ideas to Make the Season More Festive

Here are some tried and true methods for making the season more festive and less stressful. (At least they work for me.)

1. Make Peppermint Whipped Cream. It adds a little oomph to your coffee in the morning. For extra punch add some cocoa to your coffee and make a mocha.
2. Make Cookies/Marshmallows. I have to make my Soft Gingerbread cookies every year. Well I have for the last 5 or 6 years. So I'm making it a tradition.

3. Sing Christmas Songs at the top of your lungs. Nothing chases the Grinch away like a silly reindition of the 12 Days of Christmas

4. Avoid the lines for Santa by going first thing in the morning on a week day. This is the only reason my kids have seen Santa or the Easter Bunny. I REFUSE to wait in line for hours for this.

5. Add glitter, sequins or lights to everything. Some pine garland/tree/wreaths don't hurt either.

6. Watch the cheesy Christmas Movies on Lifetime, Oxygen, or the numerous re-tellings of The Christmas Carol. Just keep in mind that some of those movies would seem really creepy if it wasn't for the Christmas sheen on everything. Ghost comes back to visit and help you see things differently? Horror story. Woman gets a kids Santa letter asking for a new mommy by mistake. She takes it as a sign to inject herself into the family. Another horror story. Fiance dumps you just before the holidays, so you hire an actor to pose as your soul mate, you fall in love with said actor after a weekend and end up spending your life together? A bit over the top. But all of these make sense during Christmas.

7. Enjoy the parties. Especially those with the White Elephant gift  exchange. Nothing like a silly random gift to make things more hilarious. Plus you can get rid of the shit you didn't want in the first place. Or the Christmas Chamber Pot you got at last years White Elephant party. (No, I didn't get it, but it's been re-gifted around the office for years. It's kind of a tradition now.)

8. Reduce your gift buying list by having a dinner out with whomever, siblings, family, friends, after the new year. It'll make the season less stressful because you'll be spending less. And then you have something fun to look forward to in the next coming months. Plus, you don't have to clean your house this way. ;) More time for cheesy movies and cookie making.

9. Enjoy all the "BIG" warm, snuggly sweaters. This is the time to cover up all those love handles, bumps, and extra you that you've suddenly ended up with (from the cookies and marshmallows) and no one can tease you for it. Cause they're usually in them too.

10. Just breathe. Remember it'll all be over in a few weeks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Number 10 is the one I will most likely do...even though all of these suggestions are so great.

My BFF makes homemade marshmallows. I went over to her house a few weeks back and she had some sitting on the table. They looked HORRIBLE...but she was like, "try one".

Well, let's just say that four or five marshmallows later I had to tell myslef NO NO NO NO NO!!!

Happy holidays!!

SpiritPhoenix said...

Yeah, it's what's helping me get through it the most too.

Angel Baby and I made Raspberry Marshmallows last Saturday. I have to warn people that if they try them, they will ruin themselves from ever having the store-bought ones again.