It’s Gregory’s day again – when the birds get married. I’ve written about our European tradition and some of our family traditions last year but here’s a reminder:) On the eve before the day we “throw light into the water” – meaning tealight candles on small boats (we have ours on a string so we don’t pollute the environment).
Even when we don’t have any elaborate boat to show off, a simple wooden block will do.
Boats can be anything – from wooden clogs or simply wooden blocks to elaborate castles made from recycled materials and everything in between.
Look at that smile and tell me it’s not worth it;). You don’t need anything for this – ok, a small candle, that’s it:).
It’s always fun and it’s a nice way to get the whole family out – the time of year and day when we might not be so inclined;). And those moments become memories that time can not erase… Try it out – on any given day;)
I must admit I’m not very romantic and neither is my alpha male (well, the fact that I call him “alpha male” could tell you we’re a more primal than romantic :D). To paint you a picture: we were laying in bed yesterday and he says: “Oh, do we have our anniversary today?” And my answer was: “Maybe… I think so, not sure.” None of us celebrates it and we always forget :D. We never know how many years we are together, I have to count every time and he doesn’t even know how to count :D. So we are not the most romantic couple. We are very practical people. I’d prefer to get a mixer or a pot to a bouquet of flowers or knick-knacks. We don’t read poetry (although he knows one poem by heart – it’s not a love poem, though :D. But he recites it beautifully).
For most of us, quality time is pretty high on the list – especially for kids…
He brings me sweets from grocery store and always cleans the trays after baking (I hate doing that) and makes me furniture and stuff. I buy him t-shirts, bake chocolate desserts, cook food he likes and help him with commas in his reports. Stuff like that – that’s our love language :D. We give each other things we need and like and help with things that the other one hates. Not something you’d write a romcom on – but you could raise a couple of kids on it;). And humour – neither of us could live without that! And it’s very practical for raising kids as well – you need it at times;).
Our family’s love language is food I guess :D. That wasn’t listed but I am sure it’s ours 😀
I never fell for grand romantic gestures – they often seemed kind of fishy to me :D. I prefer the real deal to the over-the-top. I hate pretentiousness and being fake – so I’d trade flowers for cleaning trays any time :D. Maybe because I grew up with two very very different parents (they say opposites attract – it certainly was true for them:). My dad was an engineer who worked at (technical) University and in a factory and people there were “no-nonsense real” and my mom was a journalist who worked in newspaper house, surrounded by “cultural people” who flirted, talked about each other a lot and there was a very different vibe. They always seemed fake to me and I didn’t like that. Not all of them, but many. So I knew from early age on that people are very different and value and want different things.
If your loved one likes sweet words, write a love letter!
Last year our family did the quiz on love languages and I was sure gifts will be somewhere because most of us love giving gifts but we all scored 0 on that (maybe that really is there “just to weed the jerks out” as Taylor Tomlinson says😉 – just kidding – there’s nothing wrong with liking to get something you desire but it’s a fun bid and there’s some truth to it: “you want what your partner is not doing”:). For any who didn’t hear about the concept before these are the options: physical touch, actions of service, words of affirmation and gifts. Anyway, as it turns out, our love language is physical touch which is very practical because it is free, always available (if we’re together), quick and efficient:). And you can touch in some way even when you’re fighting while it’s very hard to say something affirmative or give gifts at that time;). But every language has its perks, I guess.
Our love language is physical touch – luckily we’re the same which is very practical:).
I think the beauty of being with someone for a long time is that they already know what you value and want (or what your love language is if that’s your preferred vocabulary). I don’t care about flowers when I have nowhere to put them because the kitchen is a mess. I would much prefer that he cleans the kitchen and there are no flowers. I prefer the pot flowers anyway (biologists, you know;) and we have some of those;). But somebody else might really really like the cut flowers in bouquets! Some people really need words of affirmation. That’s not very high on my list, for me it really is: “Action speaks louder than words.” Don’t get me wrong, I love to talk to people but we can talk about other stuff, I don’t need you to tell me how much you love me – it’s a nice bonus but I need you to show me. My friend wants to hear that but couldn’t care less about physical touch while I could never do long distance relationship for that reason – we are all different.
Spread some love around – it’s nothing garish about that – do it your way so it feels authentic and real and you will feel great about it:).
So this month, think about what you like to give and what you like to receive and what your loved one likes – and try to make a cute surprise:). It doesn’t need to be anything intimate or romantic – it can be quality time with your kid or giving a nice bouquet to you nanna. Everything counts:). PS: the best gift I have ever gotten was a massage table with a coupon for 15 minutes of massage that never expires and I can use it whenever I want to – even a few times in a row;). Just an idea if you have someone who values physical touch in your life – or if you are that person you could send him/her this post as a hint;).
According to the research, the vast majority of people who make new year’s resolutions, gives them up by 17th to 19th of January (different studies found different dates but it amazes me how close the dates are!) So 17th of January is now the official “Ditch the new year’s resolutions day”. And it’s astonishing how quickly after the new year that is!
Goals… how can we follow them after the January?
So what can poor man do? Well, we can try to get around goals with habits. We can usehabit trackers if that motivates us. We can use accountability buddies (friends, children, spouses, partners,…) Some people hire a coach even! In my experience, the problem is usually that we are too ambitious with our goals. Start small and start today:). And you can mess up as many times as you want, just get back on the horse every time you mess up.
January is the birthday month here so I don’t plan a lot of other things…
Or do what I do – I don’t touch my goals until 19th of January – the reason has nothing to do with “Ditch the new years resolutions day” but more with the fact that two of my kids are January babies so I know I will spend all my free time making stuff for them: sewing clothes, making and shopping and wrapping gifts, baking cakes, planning and executing bd parties with all the food, decorations and of course, another cake… It makes no sense to think I will do any serious thing outside that this time. If new years resolutions seem to slip away on you, you can try this system – it works for me:D.
One tool is the habit tracker…
It’s always nice to try different methods to find what works for you. You might genuinely not like resolutions at all – that doesn’t mean you can’t live your life with some intention. And maybe you prefer less control at the moment or would like to give the chance more power in your life in general. Nothing is wrong – you just need to find what you enjoy at this particular time in your life.
Accountability buddies…
We don’t need to optimize all the time but it’s good to do that intentionally – like: “I have small kids so right now so they are my priority and everything else will just go with the flow.” So if you ever get bored with just being a mom you can revisit: “Ok, kids can do without me for x amount of nights a week so I can start doing y that I have always wanted” or “I feel like we really need some date nights – let’s find a babysitter” etc… At the moment everything needs to be optimized. I don’t believe that. But it is nice to be thoughtful – this is what matter to me now and this doesn’t. If you make something your goal you might want to do something about it. But it doesn’t need to be big – I believe in small habits and changing our environments. That’s always worked best for me, at least. But more on that later on:).
I usually don’t make new year’s resolutions – but I’ve made one resolution once in 2010 and it worked in that case:). So maybe I should give them another go… But the problems with new year’s resolutions is that the majority of people stick to them until 17th or 19th of January (different studies found different dates but it’s still less than 3 weeks!!!) That’s not a good trajectory :D.
We still have two weeks to think about the new year;)…
From what I’ve learned about goal setting from science perspective I think the biggest problems are: – resolutions are too vague – they are too restrictive and unrealistic
Let’s set our goals realistically to set us for success.
So let’s be smart about it this year – we still have 2 weeks to think about it and decide what we want and how we want it. It should be as specific as you can get it – no “I want to loose weight, do sport and eat healthy” – that is too vague. “I will only eat fruit and veggies as my evening snack, go dancing once a week and on a walk with my friend every other week” – that is something we can actually execute. It’s better to start light – not very restrictive – you don’t say you won’t snack in the evening – just chose different foods if that is your guilty pleasure. You don’t commit to everyday run if you don’t enjoy it already – choose an activity you like and commit to doing it once a week. If you’d like to do more art, do it once a week for half an hour for starters. Or 5 minutes a day if that’s easier for you.
Winter is the traditionally time to dream and plan… (if you’re not a sky resort owner;)
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true” Greg Reid
The best representation of resilience – a big stack of rejections – that becomes a game:)
So here’s my example: I know I want to get my resilience back – I used to be much braver and I kind of miss that girl. Especially because I found out that resilience to rejection and failure is kind of the hallmark of every successful artist I have learned of. I have no grand ambition but I would like to make this my fulltime job:). Steve Martin gave himself a deadline when he’s gonna quite comedy and start doing something else if he’s now successful by that time and the date came and he wasn’t successful yet but he didn’t quit because he just loved it so much. I love that approach! Therefore I chose Stephen King‘s “Get a bigger nail“ for my mantra of the year.
I want to write and illustrate my own children’s story:).
I want to apply to things that I know I won’t get just to get over myself. I want to make my children’s’ book portfolio and start sending it around – at least once a week once it’s done (hopefully until March). I want to write those children’s books that I have my synopsis down and do a storyboard on it. And I want to finish at least 10 of Schoolism’s courses (they are usually 9 weeks long). What do you want to work on next year? Any idea? And what would you suggest or wished from me?
As I’ve promised I’ve got another lovely tradition for you – handmade personalized ornaments for Christmas socks! We started this tradition when my kids were babies and they all still love it – although they are teens now and teens are supposed to hate everything, especially their parents and their stupid traditions :D.
Let’s take Christmas socks on another level – its pretty much free but means so much to kids!
So what’s it all about? As it is accustom here, we hang our socks for St. Nicolaus to fill them – in USA it’s usually Santa who does that but in Europe, at least in the middle part, it’s St. Nicolaus who fills the sock – and as you know, we have 3 good men who bring gifts in December.
In Europe, St. Nicolaus fills the socks but whoever does it, you can still decorate them;)
But we took this tradition further – every year I make every member of the family a little ornament of something that marked their year. Everybody choses their “logo of the year” themselves and I just make it. I usually cut it from felt and glue it on the cuff of the sock but sometimes the chosen ideas can be represented in a bit more creative ways – like the hula-hoop or juggling sticks, a fish net or a book. However you do the ornament is up to you but it is a very nice tradition to start and we all fondly look at ours every year and debate what we’ll chose for this year.
It’s always fun to look back at the things that marked our past years – some even decade ago!
So if you want to make it yourself, here’s what you’ll need:
A piece of felt: if can be synthetic or natural wool felt which is much nicer to work with but it is sometimes hard to find and more expensive so I save it for projects that kids will use and for this I used synthetic felt scraps because you only need a very small amount for these ornaments.
Scissors and PVA glue.
Something to draw your designs – it could be a pencil, white pencil or washable pen. *Also a scrap piece of paper and pencil to draw your sketches on if you need it.
Optional: punches – I used hole punches for eyes
Optional: permanent alcohol markers to draw the eyes, fins and other small details. You could also paint the felt but in my experience synthetic felt doesn’t take paint that well so you might want to try on a piece of scrap first.
This is my eldest’s sock – and there’s her whole life on there:) So fun to look back!
Tomorrow, you get a video tutorial so you’ll see how I made ours – it’s pretty easy and fun! And you’ll get to see what we’ve chosen this year:) By the way: my kids have already informed me that I will have to do that for them when they will be grown ups – and not just that! They intend to carry out that tradition and if they really intend to have so many kids as they plan, I am looking to doing 17 ornaments a year (for us and including their partners and all potential kids;). As you can tell, they really love it, even alpha male does:).
Sometimes the best things are free of charge – holiday traditions are one such example – things we do are extremely low cost (it is December after all;) but create so many fond memories! Check them out and give one a go this year – you might find the one you love;).
Holiday traditions create more happy memories than pricy gifts – tested;).
We do all sorts of stuff during the December and our holiday traditions multiply like rabbits – so in many years of cohabiting with little creatures we’ve accumulated quite a few for you to chose from;).
I’ve already written about advent calendars last year but Christmas time is coming so it is worth repeating it:). It’s a lovely and can be a zero cost activity that connects the whole family if done in a smart way. With a sprinkle of imagination it can turn into a month of joy – it doesn’t have to be just filling up the calendar with sweets or buying a premade chocolate calendar. Nothing wrong with those (except that the chocolate there is horrible :D) but these handmade ones can be so much more fun!
Make a little advent calendar that you can mail to a friend, give to kids or another loved one:)
Here is an advent calendar that you can make out of a sheet of copy paper:) – and you can fill it with little holiday tasks that kids have to do with you – like baking cookies, decorating the tree, going for a walk into the decorated city, feeding the ducks, whatever floats your boat… What I would like to do is show people you don’t really need a lot for happiness:) – that sets us free:). I guarantee you that this simple thing brings so much joy to the kids! You know how little kids spell the word love, right? It’s “T-I-M-E”;). And so you won’t be bored playing dolls with them – here are some ideas;). And even some adults wouldn’t mind this kind of a calendar – if you’re making it for a spouse you already know what they would enjoy doing with you so choose accordingly. You can add a touch of holiday spirit with it – like kissing under the mistletoe, watching Christmas movie together, going ice skating,… you know what they like:).
It’s world children’s day and there are tons of ways to celebrate it – from donating to organizations for children to volunteering in local events that benefit children and of course,… Or just taking good care of the ones in your life. I am not into cliches like “they are our future” (although they truly are;) or into “tiger” or “helicopter” parenting but I do like to spend time with kids – especially mine. I always loved kids and they always loved me back – that was the one relationship that always seemed to work – even before I had kids – I love their honesty and curiosity – we mesh really well together:).
Create with kids in your life – that’s a great activity!
Normally, I’d do something with my children today but I am sick and it just doesn’t go away so I finally laid down – when I couldn’t sit anymore… I hate being sick, by the way. As a little kiddo, I was always healthy, I had a great nanny but when I went to school I was sick A LOT as a child and there was a weird dynamic around that in our house. So it’s still different for me because I just can not go and lay down when I don’t feel well. I keep thinking I am just lazy and I have to push through it – and although I am very well aware of where all that comes from it is still very difficult and I still need my alpha male to tell me to just go lay down already (and I never do that the first 10 of his tries;)… I am so glad that I didn’t carry this through – our kids are great at setting up healthy limits for themselves – if they feel not well they will not go to training etc… I am so happy they are not following this example:).
Does anybody else have any similar exeperiences and how do you deal with that? What makes you get the rest when you really really need it? I find I do the same thing with my sleep – I live on the edge and get sick a lot and I’d like to change that… Preferably, before the winter comes:D
One of the best things in life are the little surprises it brings. The little traditions nobody really thought to invent but they just emerged. One of those is our “family day”. One day we decided to watch an animated movie together (that happens rarely so it’s a special occasion;) and to make it even better, I baked blueberry chocolate muffins – with lot’s of chocolate;).
This was our first family day – very humble beginnings as you can see :D…
We all loved it. And than somebody proposed we should do that every year. So there you have it – we have a family day every year – when we watch an animated movie and bake chocolate blueberry muffins. You see, kids don’t really need that much to be happy. Only one of our kids have a smart phone – and she didn’t even want it – she got it from grandpa (he asked us first if it’s ok). The others don’t want it. They don’t spend time on screens not because it would be forbidden (it’s not and I keep my tablet on the counter if somebody needs it) but because real life is too interesting to miss:).
There’s always something sweet and home baked for our family day:)
Sometimes we decorate our muffins with flags or put them in nice cupcake holders. Sometimes we don’t. That’s not important – it’s the time we spend together watching something cute and funny (and many times deeper than most movies for grown-ups – how do you say a normal movie not made for kids specifically – “adult movie” sounds like something entirely different :D)
Martinmas, Martinmaas or St. Martin’s day is celebrated in northern (and middle) Europe in honour of Saint Martin. He was a nice modest guy and there are a handful of legends about him but unfortunately he became the patron of wineries so here, he’s only associated with wine. In our little country certain food is served on Martinmas: a backed duck, our special pasta tatters and red cabbage – and of course wine. This festival is closely linked with wine because St. Martin is supposed to be the one who turns must into wine. Nobody ever told me anything else about him and people are always drunk on Martinmas – that’s why I never liked this holiday as a child. *I liked the tatters, though and we make them every year. When we couldn’t visit grandpa due to the isolation rules, I mailed it to him:).
During corona I mailed tatters to my dad since we couldn’t visit and make them in person for him as usual:).
But once I had kids of my own and read a lot about different festivals around the world, I found a gentle and very touching tradition from German countries (that doesn’t involve wine:)) and happens on the eve of St. Martins’ day (that is one day before – I used to always mess that up – German speaking countries celebrate everything the eve before the day because in pagan days their day started at the sunset and it gets dark very early in November)…
Little lights just add magic to everything. I have this little candleholder from my friend’s wedding some 20 years ago…
The kids gather in a procession that is lead by “St. Martin” (a person in costume, sometimes on a horse) and carry lanterns on a short wintery walk through the night. If you’ve been on this blog before, you probably know that I am a real kid at heart and therefore I love lights – candles, fairy lights, lanterns, everything that makes the dark night magical…
I made a cute little gnome carrying a lamp for our nature corner for Martinmas some years ago.
This is a wonderful tradition and I was sorry we don’t have it here. But I still wanted to give it to my kids – so we made it – and invited our friends to join us – and we do this every year since they were little (except for the obvious times when it was forbidden due to isolation – but even then, kids wanted to go – just our family). Sometimes there’s a lot of people, sometimes it’s really intimate but it is always magical.
A picture of some of the lanterns we made for the Martinmas procession.
Sometimes we make elaborate lanterns, other times we make really simple ones but that doesn’t matter much – even if we just grab the bought lanterns we have at home it’s still magical!If you have kids in your life, take them for a walk with lanterns – I guarantee they will like it:). It’s great if you have a park or lake nearby but even if you go just down the block it’s still magical:). And if you want to hear more ideas how to make kids lives magical and make a simple lantern, stick around for tomorrow’s tutorial:).
Very Arty Fairy 