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| I'm practicin' my Sparkle-n-Shine for the Christmas Season! Yes I am! |
That's right! Two months from this very day, it's gonna be Christmas. There's no point in gettin' all mad about it. Time keeps marchin' on, and days come and go, and it'll be Christmas in sixty more days. It's okay, Friends!
Next week, I'll be all about Halloween again, because Halloween is next Friday (I hope you're ready!) but since today's the Twenty-Fifth, I just wanna talk about Christmas a little bit, just because there's so much preparation that's involved.
And I guarantee you, Friends, that if you don't leave your behind-the-scenes preparatin' to the last minute- meaning the day after Thanksgiving, your Christmas Holiday Season will go much more smoothly, and you'll experience up to ninety-seven percent less stress.
How?
Well, just be prepared! Think ahead. You can buy Christmas presents year-round, you know, when things come on sale. If you haven't been shoppin' year-round, it's definitely not too late to start. In fact, now's a great time to get started, if you haven't already. You don't hafta wrap all your presents yet, but it'd be a good idea to put all your boughten presents in one location, and have your giftwrap, tape, gift bags, labels and tags, scissors, curling ribbon, regular ribbon, pens and markers, another thing of tape, and some boxes and bows in the same general location as where you're keeping your boughten presents hid.
This will save you time that you'd otherwise spend hunting for all these things when you oughtta be wrapping! There's a big chunka stress zapped right there!
Next, check on your lights and ornaments. Do you know where all your decorations are? Are they all in good condition? If they are, just put 'em in a safe area so they're on-deck and stay safe until you put them up. If you see that you need something, like another stringa lights, or maybe just some bulbs, put those items on a list so that you can run to the store and pick 'em up when they go on sale, or you can shop for what you need online. When you've procured those needed things, put them in a safe place so you know right where to go when it's time to decorate.
Bzzzzt! That's the sound of me zappin' more of your stress!
If you do a lot of bakin' or makin' treats before the holidays, I wouldn't start that now. It's too early. But it isn't too early to pick up your essentials that have a long shelf-life, a little bit each time you go to the grocery store. You know. Get a couple bags of flour this trip. Pick up some sugar, brown and white and powdered next time. You have a few weeks before Bakin' and Makin' Season is upon us, so if you spread out your purchases over a few shoppin' trips to the grocery store, you won't be so stressed out or quite so apt to grouse about how the price of stuff is always going up, up, up. (I know you will, anyway, though, Friends, because grousing about grocery prices seems to be just another charming part of the Big People Condition. I get it!) Save your perishables for closer to when you're gonna be baking, but your long shelf-life stuff, you can put in a special box, clothes basket, or tote that you don't need to use for other things, and then all your dry ingredients will be all gathered up and in one place. Again, there's another big chunka stress all taken away!
Now think about your collection of Christmas Sweaters. How are they lookin'? Are there any with moth-holes? You could recycle those into stockings, if you wanna, or if it's a kind of sweater that looks pretty good with some felt patches in festive colors, go ahead and patchup your moth-holey Christmas Sweater.
That's about all for now, friends. I don't wanna overwhelm ya, especially since Halloween is now less than a week away, and you Big People sure do get overwhelmed over these holidays.
If ya want a little free ten-dollar advice from your pal Zoe, about how not to make merry instead of miserable, now that we're heading into the Fall and Winter Holidays, I'll tell it to ya, Friends: Just breathe. Accept that your holidays will be perfectly imperfect. If ya wanna dwell on what goes wrong, then you'll be miserable, but if ya just learn to laugh off the little and not-so-little things that can go wrong over the holidays, you'll be a lot happier.
If ya look at it from a Little Kid's perspective, we're not gonna remember if the napkin rings didn't match the candlesticks on the Thanksgiving table. We're not gonna get all bent outta shape if each little sprig of parsely is placed just so around the turkey on the plate, or if the wreath on the door is hung a bit askew. If the tree's crooked, or unevenly decorated, we're not really gonna notice. If the cat climbs the tree and knocks the whole works over, we'll definitely notice that, and laugh at it, and remember it. But that doesn't mean you oughtta sweat it.
What we Little Kids remember is how we feel during the Holidays. We remember feelin' safe and warm and happy and well-fed. We remember the fun. We remember the smell of good things in the oven. But we also pick up on crazy stress from our Big People.
So if you get all stressed out, tryin' to be everywhere on a holiday, Friends, or tryin' to please everybody, just remember this: Don't. You do as much as you can. Be where you wanna be. Laugh and enjoy the time with the people closest to you, and everybody else will just take care of themselves. If ya hafta skip out on some obligations, will people whine about it? Probably. But you know what? That's probably the very sort of person who would whine about it if you didn't skip out on the obligation. They'd find something to whine about. Some people just get their jollies in life by complaining and being all nasty. Don't let 'em steal your Holiday Wonder, Friends.
Hey. That's it for me for today, Friends. I get very passionate about the Holidays, because I just love 'em. I think you did, too, when you were my age, Friends, and I just wanna help you get back to that place. I'll be seein' ya tomorrow. Muah!
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