Happy New Year!

Wow! Another holiday season come and gone! This year was a very busy one, but so so much fun. Christmas and New Year’s should be on a 3 day weekend every year! It was so nice to be able to enjoy the craziness of the holiday, but then to also have the down time afterward to truly soak it in. Most years my husband has to go back to work December 26th, so this year really felt like such a gift!

I mentioned in this post that Christmas is absolutely my favorite holiday, but that it is such a busy time of year for us, as it is for so many people. In the days leading up to Christmas, I really felt the crazy start to set in. Phone calls to track down Christmas cards that hadn’t shipped yet, sorting through a year’s worth of pictures for photo calendars, baking cookies with the kids, getting emails from Amazon letting me know that my nephews gifts would NOT be in before the holiday (they actually were), trying to lay out clothes for our family of four, who would now be celebrating Christmas the 24th, the 25th, AND the 26th, plus making sure that our shopping was done, put together, and wrapped. First world problems, I know, but enough to make my head spin none-the-less. For those that follow on Facebook, you may have seen this post where I had to retreat to my laundry room office to decompress a little and focus a lot.

The pressure definitely builds those few days before, doesn’t it? This year, as I was feeling the panic, I made a very conscious decision. It was Christmas eve, I was ironing tiny dresses, chopping veggies for a veggie tray, packing up cookies to take to my mom’s, wrapping gifts that had just been delivered, while doing a terrible job at painting my nails in between everything (I don’t know why I do that. I am ALWAYS doing that), when my husband walked in the door from work. I could tell I looked like a frazzled mess. I felt like I had been running around for a week straight, and I had. That wasn’t the wife I wanted to be. That wasn’t the mom I wanted to be. I made the decision right there. When my heels and lipstick go on, no more crazy. Once I get dressed, I will take a deep breath, relax and let myself enjoy my favorite holiday. It was a very conscious decision and I couldn’t believe it, but it worked! I didn’t let myself rush my kids to get ready, I didn’t yell at my husband to load the car. We had done all we could do, we had done our best, and we were as ready as we were going to be. Was my veggie tray shaped like a Christmas tree, nope! Did I ever get that second coat of nail polish on, nope! But I enjoyed my family, and what was even nicer, they enjoyed me. Sometimes it takes that very conscious decision to just stop and enjoy things every once in a while, as silly or as impossible as it sounds. I am making that one of my New Year’s resolutions this year, Stop and enjoy what you have worked so hard for, because at that point, how much more can you really do anyway? You might as well just enjoy it!

We had a beautiful Christmas. This year, we spread our holiday out over 3 days and were able to really get quality time in with both of our families, which was so nice. My husband didn’t have to rush back to work the day after Christmas, so he was actually able to “play” with the kids and all the new toys. I was able to catch up with my two dearest friends from high school, one of which I hadn’t seen in 6 years! It was exactly how I dream the Christmas season should be. We also ended the 3 days of non-stop Christmas festivities by leaving the kids for an overnight at their grandparent’s house, so that may have helped just a tad as well.

We officially wrapped up the holiday season with our annual New Year’s Eve Party (you can read all about the prep for that here).

We ate, we drank, and we rang in 2016 with our little ones and some of our closest friends. It was low-key, the kids were adorable, and on New Year’s Day, my husband pushed two parts of our sectional together to build Mega-Couch and we practically lived on it for 48 hours straight. I could not ask for a better ending to our year.

And now to look ahead. I am always excited for a new year. I am a big believer in fresh starts, in setting New Year’s resolutions. It again comes down to making a conscious decision to make a change. I know that some people don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I love the idea of taking a look at your life and thinking, what can I push myself to do this year? What can I work on changing? What can I push myself to stop doing this year? How can I bring more happiness into my life?

This year, I already mentioned that I am going to try to stop and enjoy the things that I work hard for. That doesn’t mean that I am not going to still go crazy trying to pull off a certain party theme or cram way to much stuff into one weekend, but it means that when the time comes, I am not going to spend the party running around straightening streamers, I am going to pour myself a glass of wine and sit down with my guests.

My second personal New Year’s resolution, and I hesitate to even put this in print because it terrifies me, but I really want to run a 5k this year. It is something that I have always wanted to do. It is on my bucket list.

I kick myself for not trying it in college when I actually considered myself to be somewhat of “a runner,” but I was too chicken. I am still chicken now, but there is something about getting older that lets you give yourself more freedom to make a fool of yourself, and I really just want to prove to myself that I can do it. One of the reasons that I started this blog was to push myself to try new things, so we’ll see. If anybody has any tips, has a favorite local 5k that they think I should try, or wants to run their first 5k with me, I would absolutely LOVE to hear from you! Don’t make me do this by myself!!!

My third New Year’s resolution is a goal for the blog, which is to expand Happily Frazzled onto Instagram and possibly Twitter. I am such an old lady when it comes to this stuff, I am seriously surprised that this blog doesn’t have a MySpace page. So hopefully in 2016 I will get myself together and join the rest of the world in expanding my social media presence. You can find me (hopefully) as @HappilyFrazzled on Instagram or Twitter, where I will probably be incorrectly hashtagging all over the place.

I hope your New Year is already off to a great start and I hope you guys are setting some resolutions! You can seriously do ANYTHING, you just have to decide that you can :).

xo
c