Our 2015 Holiday Card

I haven't sent holiday cards in many years. When I used to send them, I would write personal messages on every one. Once I had children, I no longer had the time, energy, or interest in writing out a hundred personal messages. So I opted for writing a personal letter instead. I hope it doesn't feel too generic or impersonal. It's the best I could do!

I worked with this designer to create them. She was great to work with!

In terms of how we're displaying the cards we receive this year, I strung some twine from one end of our window to the other. We use little clothespins to hang them up. It's so fun to check the mail every day!

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Join Us Now!

Friends! Purposeful Parenthood is about to start! The first course will start on Monday, January 11, 2016. Do you want to join us? You can register here.

I'm so eager to wrestle with important topics related to family within a community of like-minded individuals.  

Over the course of four weeks, we will explore four different themes: 

1. Vision: Starting with the End in Mind
2. Environment: Preparing Our Space
3. Time: Life Rhythms 
4. Connection: Better Together

At the start of the week, you will receive instructions about the Purposeful Parenthood Challenge for that week. For example, the challenge for the first week is to create a Family Mission Statement. The second week we will be selecting an area of our home to update in a family-friendly way. The third week we will be thinking about our ideal schedules and the kinds of rituals we want to incorporate into our lives. Finally, we will be focusing on our partnerships and how to strengthen them in ways that build a strong foundation for our families.

Each day, a new lesson will be uploaded that relates to completing the challenge for the week. Daily lessons include experiences like reflection prompts, templates to help you tease out your thoughts, inspiration, etc. You can connect with others in the online community forum on a daily basis for support, to share ideas, or to ask questions. The following Monday, we will share the results of our challenges from the previous week via the online community. On Tuesday, we will begin the process again for the new week's challenge. 

I hope you'll join us! You can find out more information by reading the Course Overview or About the Author. And here's the link to the Registration Page.

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Time to Hibernate

I'm laughing as I write the word "hibernate" because living in Central Texas requires anything but hibernating. This weekend I went running around the lake in shorts and a t-shirt!

But Winter Break is upon us, and it's time for me to hang up my blogging shoes until January. Even though we are working really hard to keep our holiday season low-key, we are still going to be busy spending time with family. 

I need to really think about what my intentions are going to be for next year. I want to shift my focus away from doing to being. As much as possible. I'll always be a doer. And what we do affects who we are. But you know what I mean. 

My word for 2015 was "balance." I didn't do too great of a job achieving that, but I'm on the right pathway for sure. 

For 2016, I'm really drawn toward focusing on my health and wellness. I feel like my body is desperately out of shape. My clothes don't fit. My muscles are weak. My back is still hurting me. 

I want to continue to be a positive and present parent. We've seen such a positively shift in Henry lately. I'm excited about my upcoming Purposeful Parenthood course and hope that you'll join us! 

I also want to self-publish five children's books with Matt. And I want to strengthen my graphic design skills to support that work. 

There I go with all that doing again. 

I honestly can't believe that we are nearly 20 years into this century. The year 2000 seems like yesterday. I want to cherish this time with my children. I know it's going to go fast. I'm looking forward to lots of vacations this year: at least three with my family, one with just Matt and me, and one by myself. 

I still have to formally fill out a reflection form and might even host the Third Annual Reflection & Rejuvenation Get Together.

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Join us for the upcoming Purposeful Parenthood course! We'll be reflecting on the kind of family we are and the kind of family we want to become. Learn more...Register now!

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Easy DIY Ornament

I am on our staff holiday party planning committee this year. As part of my work, I volunteered to plan an easy DIY ornament project. 

I purchased all the supplies at Hobby Lobby:

1. Ornaments
2. Ribbon
3. Glitter
4. Stickers

Putting the project together was a cinch. I used a piece of paper to create a funnel that enabled me to put glitter in the ornament. Then I stuck on the stickers to spell "joy" and tied the ribbon to the top. Voila!

I'm all about easy and fun this holiday season! 

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Video: Our Year in Review

Our yearly family recap video is complete (thanks to Matt!). This video captures what our life feels like about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, parenting feels really hard and not much fun--just being honest!

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Holiday Card Update

So back in October I was way ahead with getting my holiday cards done. I wrote a yearly update about my life and sent 16 photos to a graphic designer on Etsy to make the card. 

I was still ahead when I got them printed through Costco. And even when I picked up some awesome stamps from the post office. 

I started to fall behind while I was waiting for my return address stamp to arrive from Etsy, and now that I need to get more than 100 people's addresses, I'm really far behind! 

I need to hurry up!

Holiday cards have been arriving at our house, so I strung up some twine and clip each card to it with a tiny clothespin. It's really sweet. 

The holidays are so fun!

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15 Minutes of TV a Week

We've always tried to be intentional about reducing Henry's screen time. A while back, we weren't letting him watch any on the weekdays but then we were letting him watch shows for about 45-60 minutes while Tate slept on the weekends. 

Then it started to feel like too much. I dreaded the thought of trying to pull back his screen time (I envisioned massive fits), but I reminded myself, "You're the parent. If you think it's not good for him to watch so much TV, then you should institute a new limit." And so we did. Now we do only one 15-minute show on Saturday or Sunday. And it feels so much better. 

However, there are still times when I'm craving something to occupy him without any of my attention (like if I'm having trouble getting Tate down for a nap) or if I want to just sit and knit. Henry and Tate don't have much trouble playing together without much attention, but Henry struggles when Tate is sleeping. 

Enter Sparkle Stories. I read about them on a blog years ago but just recently looked them up. And we love them! We get access to several of them for free, and we will listen to one or two a weekend. I simply use the podcast app on my phone. 

They engage Henry the same way TV does, and yet they demand more active brain involvement since he has to visualize what's happening. They are such sweet, realistic stories. I'm especially inspired by Martin & Sylvia. They give us a lot of ideas about what to do as a family!

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My Addiction to Technology

 

This article about how easy it can be to become addicted to technology these days really resonated with me. The irony was that I came across the article while I was scrolling through Facebook. 

There really is a lot of amazing stuff that comes into my life through Facebook. I don't want to cut it out altogether. The trick, for me, is about moderation. I literally pick up my phone to fill up every spare moment I have. I'm waiting for Matt to get out of the shower so we can go to bed? Let me check Facebook. I'm getting a pedicure? Let me scroll through Facebook. I'm going to the bathroom? Let me check Facebook. 

The four things that are missing from my life right now because I'm filling it up to the brim with Facebook are:

1. Time for reading real books (or even listening to books)
2. Time to just be still and to connect to my thoughts
3. Time to talk with my husband
4. Time to knit

That's the thing with things like Facebook and television. They aren't necessarily bad, but when we let them fill up our lives, they crowd out other things. Luckily I do make lots of time to pursue my dreams and big projects, but I don't make time for these littler things. 

If I want to make a change in my life, I have to identify specifically what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it. 

In this case, I've already started my knitting project. I think it would help to store it in a basket by my bed. 

With the books, I need to go to the library to get my card updated. Once I have an updated card, I can get more books and even access their downloadable books. 

I'll do this today!

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Holiday Traditions (and Reducing Holiday Stress)

The Christmas spirit is alive and kicking at the Cotner-Bradford residence!

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we drove out to a Christmas tree farm in a small rural town to cut down our Christmas tree. The boys have been eagerly anticipating the experience for about a month. Tate was thrilled to ride on a tractor out into the field. We came home with a 9.5-foot tree (they always look smaller in the field than they do at home...).

We got the ornaments down from the storage area and started hanging them on the tree. As I had hoped, it was so fun to look at all the ornaments we had collected during our travels over the past two years: San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Lake Tahoe, Michigan, and Puerto Rico. My favorite part is that Henry is the one who reminds us to stop and purchase an ornament whenever we are traveling.

There were also a handful of ornaments that friends made for us or that the boys made at school. So fun! 

We only put up a few decorations, include a banner that says "Cherish," a table runner, a glass vase with ornaments, and a holiday countdown. 

We also pulled out all our Christmas books. Here are our favorites:

• The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story
• Christmas Day in the Morning
• Christmas Farm
• Christmas Tapestry
• The Trees of the Dancing Goats
• An Orange for Frankie
• The Night Before the Night Before Christmas
• Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia!
• The Christmas Truck
• Christmas Around the World
• Christmas in Noisy Village
• The Nutcracker

We're excited to start all the activities on our Holiday Countdown calendar. Here's what we have on our list: 

• Drink eggnog
• Drink hot chocolate
• Visit the Zilker Tree
• Visit 37th Street lights
• Visit Christmas house at 1912 Crystal Shores 
• Go ice-skating
• Attend the Cherrywood Art Fair
• Make bagged lunches and deliver them to homeless people on the street
• Make a gingerbread house
• Write a letter as a family to reminisce about the year
• Make handmade holiday stamps
• Make salt dough ornaments
• Make gift-tags and cards
• Cut down an evergreen tree (or buy a potted one and plant it after Christmas)
• Decorate the tree
• Make origami paper cranes
• Wrap presents
• Write little notes to colleagues and neighbors
• Make baked goods for colleagues and neighbors
• Deliver baked goods and notes
• Decorate the house
• Write cards to family
• Make felt balls
• Drink hot chocolate and play Scrabble
• Watch a holiday movie
• Have a pillow picnic under the tree
• Ride bikes around the neighborhood to look at lights
• Cut out snowflakes
• Write a love letter
• Collect branches and pine cones and spray paint them for decoration
• Dance to holiday music
• Read a book about Kwanzaa
• Read a book about Hanukkah
• Cover the house in candles
• Hang mistletoe and kiss
• Make a list of what we're thankful for

As I write all of this, I sort of want to delete it all. It sounds so sugary-sweet! It sounds like "Look at us! Look at how perfect our life is!" There's enough of that sentiment in the blogging and Pinterest world these days. I hate to contribute more to it. 

There are two things I want to share related to our sugary-sweet Christmas:

1. Despite how sugary-sweet our Christmas traditions are, there is lots of stuff that is not perfect about our life! 
2. I have to implement specific strategies to help keep the stress level down during the holidays. 

With regard to Topic #1: There's lots that is not so sugary-sweet in our lives right now! My job continues to be hard, and I'm struggling to figure out how to balance it with the demands of my family and my relationship with Matt. We are also struggling to coach Henry through tantrums when he doesn't get his way and even hitting and kicking behavior. 

With regard to Topic #2: So many of our Christmas traditions are things we just repeat every year, so I'm not stressed about scouring the internet to look for new ideas. For example, when I hung up our Holiday Countdown, I flipped through the cards to see what supplies we would need on hand in order to execute all the projects. Then I placed, a single order on Amazon for everything all at once. I also keep a special "Christmas List" within our meal planning system, so that when Christmas rolls around I can add those things to our general shopping list. It helps that I'm not making any special trips or scrambling to get supplies. 

I better stop here before I ramble on for hundreds of more words!

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The 20-Degree Challenge

Matt and I have been trying to use our air-conditioning and heat less often in order to be better on the environment and our wallet. The thing about living in Central Texas is that you can literally go from AC to heat (and back again) in the span of a week. Oddly enough, it's not often the perfect temperature to have nothing on and the windows open. 

Matt and I have been trying to stretch what feels right in our home but undertaking the "20-Degree Challenge." We are trying not to turn on the air-conditioning until it gets hotter than 80-degrees in our house and trying not to turn on the heat until it gets lower than 60-degrees in the house. 

We've been doing this challenge for about a month, and so far it's working out well. The challenge has illuminated just how bad some of our habits used to be. For example, when it got hot in our home, we would immediately lower the thermostat, versus turning on a fan or removing extra clothing. For example, Matt has a habit of wearing long-sleeve shirts even in the summer (since so many commercial spaces are over-air-conditioned). When I get cold, it's easy for me to turn up the thermostat versus just putting on more layers, using a blanket, and sipping hot liquids. 

I honestly think the 60-degree low might be too difficult for me. So far, it's only dropped to 63 degrees during the day, and that felt like freezing. We might have to modify it to the 17-Degree Challenge. 

We'll see! 

At what temperatures do you typically turn on your AC or heat? 

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Join us for the upcoming Purposeful Parenthood course! We'll be reflecting on the kind of family we are and the kind of family we want to become. Learn more...Register now!

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