A Stress Free Christmas

This Christmas is going to be stress free as possible in our home.

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Let me just say, we have had some humdingers as Christmases go. One year we all had the influenza. We woke up – opened our gifts and went back to bed. Only to wake up again and watch a Leave It to Beaver marathon. The kids were forced to take their meds by a swing of Orange Soda and a marshmallow to blind the awful taste. (It worked.)

Another Christmas, we were in the middle of the largest Home Renovation ever. We were tiling our home by ourselves. Our friends went out of town so we were able to use their home for the actual Christmas morning (because we couldn’t walk on our floors.) We were so exhausted we ended up ordering pizza for the BIG Christmas dinner. We even forgot to buy one of our kids a Christmas gift. Yep, parents of the year – that Christmas.

So we have changed a few things up to make Christmas a little better…

Usually we put up 7 Christmas Trees, buy tons of gifts, send out Christmas cards, make awesome Christmas crafts and just overload our schedule. And for some reason, more stress.

So far this year to relieve our stress:
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We put up our Christmas trees before Thanksgiving. Biggest relief ever! I will do this from now on. It made some of close friends scrunch up their noses – but, our life needed it. We went on a road trip for Thanksgiving and when we came home – our house was already decorated.
I let the kids decorate the trees. OH MY, if you know me, this is a huge thing. I’m a little particular about my “Hallmark” tree. I’ve been collecting them since I was little and didn’t want any kids touching them. But, I did. And what a release! (Not to say, I didn’t go back and rearrange a few.) My son even made his own Texan tree.

Such a cool Christmas tree.
No Christmas Cards or letters this year. I made a collage using PicMonkey and posted it on my personal Facebook page with the explanation…no cards this year, this is it.
Merry Christmas! (The family photo above is the one.)
The people who really love us will print it out and put on their fridge to remember to pray for our crazy family.
Also, I didn’t color coordinate our clothes in the Christmas photo. In fact, I used photos from a recent trip, not even a professional one. Just me and the tripod. Easy and so much cheaper than hiring out. I couldn’t believe how much stress this caused me in the past.
Buying gifts…is even less stressful. I have bought a few of them using a Facebook Garage Sale site. Most of the presents are barely used or brand new and the seller just didn’t want to return to original store.
I am thinking about buying pizza again for our “Christmas dinner.” I know such a foreign thing…send me to Christmas prison. hehe! I’m okay with not cooking a huge dinner. We love pizza.