Good morning friends,
It is December – finally! 
The tree is up, (has been for weeks), festive excitement has filled my heart – as well as a bit of festive stress for not being as organised as I wished I was. 
We get 1 December a year and I feel I am kind of not ready for it.
I feel like every time I set out to do something festive it gets put on the back burner because I think I should be doing “more important” tasks, like revacuuming the house. I need to find the balance of doing what I need to do but at the same time making sure I enjoy this beautiful time of year with my little darling and for myself. 
Now, let me get honest with you all for a moment… Here’s some “real talk”…
I truly feel like I had great balance going all year, I did. I had my routine, I always had lists of fun things to do & I just feel like I was going great in life, I was confident in being me & my Mothering, to me my life sparkled and I was proud of it.
Then in the last couple of months things took a bit of a downwards spin for our little family and it threw me out of whack. Things out of my control happened. 
It was like I was a snow globe, I was picked up and shaken so hard and parts of me were falling everywhere and I was rushing around trying to catch it all. I burnt myself out trying to fix things I couldn’t & being stressed, I should’ve just stood back and watched it all fall, embraced the sadness & pain momentarily but let it fall away. And once it had happened & I had processed it, then I should have dealt with the mess. But instead I gathered it all up tried to hold onto to it, when there was nothing I could do. 
But we’ve passed the hard stuff, we are finding our feet again, our routine is coming back, my lists of fun things to do for Christmas has started and I can see the sparkle coming back into my life. It’s there, I see a glimmer of the sparkle at the end of the tunnel, it’s there and I’m close – but not there, just yet.
I do think I need to cut myself some slack at times. I feel we as Mothers put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect in life, to be “Pinterest perfect” and to create the magic in our children’s lives. 
And now, I am not saying that is bad. I personally love creating magic, waving my festive freak flag around, planning activities and aiming for something close to “Pinterest perfection” – but at the same time we need to give ourself some grace. We need to accept life won’t always be perfect, that it is ok to have moments that don’t sparkle and as long as you keep striving for a better day than the bad day before, it is ok. If you actively work towards things getting better, it will. Life will throw a spanner in the works it always seems when life feels perfect. Maybe it’s to knock us back down so we stay grounded? I don’t know – there are a lots of ways to look at it. But I do know without the rain we don’t get rainbows and if it’s never dark we can never appreciate the stars.
I’ve been reprioritising lately, I’m in the process of cleaning out our lives, rebuilding our routine, my mindset, our activities lists – I am getting back on top. I had to, our life had a major disruption, I became unwell, I needed some time to process everything and I lost my way for a few weeks. So I just focused on us, the three of us. That’s what is important to me. I said “no” to other distractions and simplified.  
There is no shame in taking time to focus on what is important and simplifying life so you can regroup and restructure your life. Unfortunately I needed to do this before my favourite time of year, so I feel coming into the Christmas season I am kind of unprepared, but slowly things are falling back into place – I am almost back on top, that sparkle is almost back… Almost. I am determined to get it back before Christmas.
I think Christmas for a lot of people, especially Mumma’s can be stressful – we are trying to out decorate, out craft and outdo each other – or even just be “as good” as the next Mum or that Pinterest picture. But this year, for me – I am focusing on us. 
Christmas to me is about family and remembering why we celebrate. I want to teach my daughter that this season is more about giving & serving others than receiving, not just about the lovely crafts & baking. Even though that is a wonderful thing to do, I assure you we will be doing some of them. But if I don’t get “it all” done, that is ok. 
As long as we remember the reason for the season, we look for opportunities to give and the 3 of us (well, plus the 9 other members) are together on Christmas day, it’s all wonderful. 
This year isn’t about making Christmas perfect, it’s about focusing on how fortunate we are, why we celebrate Christmas and family. That’s it. And as long as I have that, I am ok. 
(And a few chances to craft & bake with my sweet girl will be wonderful too!)
Remember to soak in the feeling of Christmas and just be, be with those you love.

I hope you are all enjoying the start of this wonderful time of year and that this honest post was something you all enjoyed. I never intend to come across as our life being perfect, I just refuse to focus in on the negative. But Christmas is hard on everyone at times and I thought I would share this – just incase it helps one person. 
Love to you all & a big Christmas hug!