Your Plans Are As Unique As You

      Halloween was last night which means that today is the beginning of Christmas for me. I know it sounds overblown to some and like we are perhaps jumping the gun but this is the way that I can maintain sanity as a mama. If I give myself more time, I can enjoy my pumpkin spice lattes and the leaves turning color while I plan my gift lists and read to the kids from the holiday book basket. Its the best time ever to get my ducks in a row and even to get a little private celebrating in before we are traveling. One of the hardest things about traveling for the holidays is the feeling of no personal celebration, no ability to be the mama myself for the holidays.  We are all living our own individual lives and I know that part the secret to my own happiness is an earlier and earlier start on the holiday season. I use a Christmas planner and a couple of books in a haphazard fashion, I scroll Pinterest and I scribble lists on odd papers....and also, I fly by the seat of my pants. This is me after all.

None of those formulas for how many gifts to buy or when exactly you should begin making cookies and storing them in the freezer are exactly right for any exact year in my exact life. I do like the concept though....so I try to come up with my own personal targets and magpie into my plans those that do seem to align. The point is to enjoy and relish the bustle and prep, the weight of responsibility that comes with being a merriment creator and the freedom and mental space that can come from a little more time coupled with some plans and systems.

This week I am revamping our breakfast menus and schedules for some of the same goals: more space, simplicity, bustle, and responsible feeling motherhood. There are things to put in line and ways to trim our old meal ideas so that they fit our new schedule and the changing interests of the palates in our home. I wish we fit some vanilla template but none of these things work that way. We nature journal, but not like anybody tells you to. I just bought, leafed through and then sold a book on How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare because we were doing bits of it already, some things were useful additions and lots of it needed to be passed on because we have a plan, its just the one that we are creating ourselves at our kitchen table. Its an interesting evolution to see myself both becoming a planner and also recognizing that for our individual house, nobody can hand me the plan. Plans are dynamic and shifting, we outgrow them and get bored by them, and all of our households quirky oddments will never be in anybody else's list.

Here's the marching to the beat of our own drums...ah yes, but marching to a beat! Lets all plan our own plans and come up with systems by being the wise observers and sensitive curators of our own people and lives. There's no easy out, nobody can do the work of life for you. But, after all....Halloween was just last night, you have time and so do I.