The major holiday has officially come and gone. I must say it was a pretty great season this year. The only dark cloud that cast a shadow upon it all was the still fresh wound left by the loss of Collin's mom. But her passing was also a good reminder as to why we need to enjoy and cherish each moment we have.
I may not be religious in the traditional sense but we do believe very strongly in tradition and with the holiday season we have developed some pretty strong traditions and hope to build some new ones with the little one and future baby (hoping for numero dos in just under two years).
Here's a glimpse into our annual traditions.
Christmas lights go up the weekend following Thanksgiving. That's how it has been and how it will always be. The reason I am so staunch about this is that I insist on taking them down New Years Eve or Day.
The Christmas tree we are a bit more flexible about. We put it up three weeks before Christmas this year, but honestly I would rather keep it to about two weeks before the big day. It finally started to crap needles everywhere two days before Christmas and the cat was trying to eat them like a moron. So we removed the decorations and put it on the back deck.
Christmas Eve is Swedish Christmas with Collin's extended family. This is comprised of a bunch of extremely fatty foods and alcohol. The constantly present dishes are potato palt (potato dumplings with bacon in the middle) commonly served with melted butter, and Swedish meatballs made from scratch served with lingonberries. A new aspect to this tradition will forevermore be my bread pudding for dessert. The drink of choice for this get together is hot buttered rum. Next year, I hope the tiny demon will stay up for dinner and gifts. She was passed out shortly after six p.m.
Christmas morning I plan to continue the tradition Collin's mom had of frying the leftover palt and making Swedish pancakes for breakfast. This year we skipped the pancakes and had leftover bread pudding, but from here on out it will be pancakes. Then after breakfast it's time for gifts. This year was fun; about halfway through opening her presents the wee one got the idea that she needed to rip the paper to open her presents. Then she preferred playing with the paper over the presents themselves, but isn't that the way of it?
Christmas day or Boxing day (the day after) we do our dinner, which we have adopted the tradition of doing an English style roast dinner including Yorkshire puddings (equivalent to a popover). We make sure to pick up a pack of crackers (fun little party poppers filled with tissue paper crowns, toys, and jokes) and tend to have a great time with it all.
I think a new tradition will be our post holiday cleanse. Starting tomorrow we will be doing another mild juicing, and we will also be doing four weeks vegan eating. Well lacto/ovo-vegetarian at least. We are excited to try this and the money we save by not having meat for a month will be worth it in and of itself. If we truly enjoy this next month of meals we will probably do this once a quarter (one month of every three / four times a year). I will keep you posted on how the next weeks go. The main reason for this much needed cleanse is to flush out the ten pounds of junk and bloat I have gained in the last week.
Yea, to say I feel gross is an understatement. The bloat is so bleh. And I know that is what it is, because when I weighed myself, though I feel like I gained fifty it's really only about eight to ten. Another thing I was really terrible about over the holiday week was not drinking enough water. Honestly, this whole month I was pretty bad about it.
Back on track I must get! My goal for the coming months is to drop six pounds (or more) each month. I am feeling confident and motivated to reach this goal finally. In my mind it is just as important (if not more so) as our financial goals. 2015 is lining up to be a year of goal achievement and awesomeness.
One thing I am committing myself to doing is putting small but regularly increasing increments of money into our savings account. I am trying that ever popular fifty two weeks savings challenge. The gist of it is you save a dollar amount equal to the number of the week; so week one you set aside one dollar, and week twenty four you set aside twenty four dollars. If you stick to this plan by the end of the year you will make a final deposit of fifty two dollars and have close to $1,400 saved. Pretty awesome? I think so.
To keep myself accountable on both the health and wealth goals for the year I will try to share where I am at with both goals via at least monthly updates.
In the next few days it will be time for the year in review for 2014, and what a crazy and exciting year it has been! Much love and best wishes from me to you!
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