We’ve been going pretty non-stop, trying to cram an entire bathroom renovation into a short amount of time (can’t wait to show you how it turned out! It’s beautiful!), while filming it and a few other projects for brands. Planning the cabin. Getting our home ready to host 30 people for Thanksgiving. Getting our gift guides ready and out before Cyber Monday (we still have two more to release!) and then my body just crashed. I got the worst flu I’ve ever experienced and have been trying to recover all week, so I apologize for some radio silence.
This week, Greta came home from school one day and said, “Mom? Do you believe in Santa?” Without hesitation, I said, “Yes!” and she said, “Good. Me too.” Apparently, one of her cousins had mentioned that he didn’t and I could see the first ounce of doubt in her eyes. I know every family has different thoughts and traditions on the subject, but I want to keep the magic alive as long as possible. I think my mom eventually broke it to me something like, “anyone can be Santa.” IÂ talked to a few girlfriends about the subject and one said that in her family it’s “You only get presents if you believe in Santa.” which I actually got a kick out of and love because then even the teenagers are saying, I believe! with a wink in their eye. And another friend said something similar to what my mom used to. How does it go down in your house? Does Santa bring the biggest gift? All the gifts? Just the stocking? Around here, Santa brings the gift the girls asked Santa for, but mom and dad usually top it with something they didn’t even think of! ;) We’re surprising the girls with a train ride on the Polar Express (in Heber City, Utah) this weekend and I can barely wait to see their reaction.
Other fun things this week!
• This looks like a really fun cookbook for movie lovers.
• I was feeling guilty about not getting my Christmas decor perfected and published on the blog this week, but then I read Stefanie’s post about “slow decorating” and after I wiped the drool off my chin, I felt better. She’s so good…
• I ordered these tortoise hoop earrings this week and can’t wait to wear them every day!
• Are you a compulsive apologizer? (I am!) According to this article, “sorry” is the word you’re never supposed to say to guests.
• On Meghan Markle’s engagement (yup!!)
• Thanks for all the love on our gift guides up to this point! Your comments saying, “This is perhaps the most on-point gift guide I’ve seen! Perfect style! And actually things I want / could see myself gifting!” are exactly what we’re going for and we make our gift guides around what we’re actually gifting ourselves! We’re excited to publish our gift guide for your parents/in-laws and home lovers next week, but in case you missed it here’s the 2017 Gift Guide so far, including:
18 Gifts for HerÂ
15 Gifts for Guys
15 Gifts for Kids
18 Gifts for Babies
15 Gifts for The Cook
Hilarious White Elephant GiftsÂ
Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
I heard the sweetest story once about Santa and I can’t remember all the details exactly…but it goes like this. At school one day, a boy was told that Santa wasn’t real. He went home and asked his mom. She explained the secret that “anyone can be Santa” and now that he knows that secret, he gets to be Santa for someone. Starting with that Christmas and every year since, he picks someone to be “Santa” for (his brother, a neighbor, a friend, a teacher, a delivery person) and leaves them a gift “from Santa.” So you see, Santa is real. :)
I’m a little sensitive about the Santa situation. I REALLY wish all parents would reinforce to their kids that not all homes are the same. If you want to tell your children that Santa brings their presents, great! But please also explain that that might not be the case for everyone else. That way when they hear other children talking about how their parents buy their presents, they can just say, ok cool! My children have always known that Santa doesn’t bring them presents, but I’m also so very careful to say that I don’t know what goes on in other people’s houses. If your friends are talking about Santa bringing presents, then I guess he does! Cool! Let’s teach our children that what happens in our homes has nothing to do with what happens in other homes, and that that’s perfectly ok. I’m so over hearing parents complain that another child “ruined” Christmas for their child. If we teach our children to be secure in their beliefs, but also wildly accepting of others’ beliefs, there will be no ruining of anything.
I just wanted to say: Hi, you’re doing an amazing job. Thank you!
Overall, my parents always achieved the “Santa only comes to those who believe” mantra and we stuck to that fairly closely. I still tell my mother I believe when we discuss Christmas, cause a girl can always use some magic and use some presents, haha.
One of my most vivid memories as a child was a group of kids in elementary school arguing over the existence of the Easter bunny. One girl insisted the bunny was real, because on Easter morning there was a life-sized, bunny-shaped hole in their dining room window. I was absolutely convinced from then on. Also disappointed, because I was terrified of the mall Easter bunny (still am, he’s petrifying) and I figured Santa wouldn’t come to visit someone who was terrified of his homeboy.
To this day, I still don’t know if her parents were really that dedicated to the magic or if she was lying through her teeth.
Hahaha, I love these types of vivid memories. My oldest sister STILL insists, regardless of what anyone says, Rudolph was outside of her window as a young girl.
On a year that we had clearly been watching too much Home Alone, my sisters and a family friend created “Santa Claus Capturers”, a club devoted to determining once and for all if Santa was real! We put bells in our stockings (they hung in our rooms–not sure how we convinced my parents to let us do that) and created some other booby traps to let us know when we needed to sneak out of bed to see who was responsible for the gifts. It worked, and we caught our mom in action. My middle sister and I shared a room, and we made the decision not to tell our youngest sister to allow her a couple more years of magic. :)