This Holiday Season

Hello, November and Happy Weekend! Now that Halloween has come and gone, we are heading into the magical holiday season. This year, I am planning to not feel so rushed and live in the present of the season. It's truly my favorite time of year and it seems to fly by so quickly as I am sure many of you feel too. Starting today, I am looking ahead at the calendar and writing down what I would like to do. By planning ahead and having what is important to me listed out, I am hoping that it will allow me to enjoy the time even more and hopefully, also eliminate some of the inevitable stress that comes with the holidays. Here are some things I have thought about thus far and would love to hear your ideas too!

1. I have never been great about sending out Christmas cards. My intentions start strong, meaning I buy or order them, only to send off a very few. Can anyone else relate? Over the last couple of years, I have been telling Victor that I wanted to follow my grandmother's tradition and commission an artist to sketch the front of our house decked in Christmas decorations and then make the sketch into Christmas cards. Well... this year, it is finally happening, I am having the sketch done and I am actually going to send out the cards! 
2. Victor and I, typically have a Christmas party in the city. Sometimes they are big or other times very small with our family and a few close friends. However, we have yet to have a Christmas party in CT. Frankly, it has been because I don't feel that the house looks "finished." We have been in constant project mode and well, there is still so much more to do. This year, I am getting over it! The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and they don't care about the landscaping not being completed or the front room furniture needing to be recovered (this is what I am telling myself!). Hence, I am picking a date where I invite all our friends from near and far for a low-key Christmas bash. 
3. As a  family tradition, we go to a Christmas show every year. Some years it may be the Nutcracker or the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. One year we went to see the broadway musical, A White Christmas. Last year, we spent the first weekend in December in San Francisco and saw Chris Botti perform an amazing Christmas Concert at the San Francisco Symphony. We plan to continue the tradition and go see Chris Botti again, but this time at the Blue Note in NYC.
4. I never knew my grandparents on my father's side, but they were big believers of tradition and passed the importance of tradition down to my dad and all of his siblings. Around the holidays, many of those traditions are honored including serving my grandmother's Chocolate Molten Cake with Coffee Cream at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My Aunt Lisa makes it ever year and my cousin Diana has learned the recipe, as well. It's one of my dad's favorites and I am going to take the time this year to learn the recipe too.

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