It is winter, right?  We’ve never spent the holidays in Florida, but I imagine it feels something like the past few days.  It’s funny how we all complain about the fact that it’s not feeling like winter around here, but if it were, then we’d be complaining about how much we hate winter and how ready we are for it to be spring.

Christmas is, once again, just around the corner.  It’s a holiday that I always think of as so very special, but one which has become so very stressful now that we’re adults and stuff.

Last year we didn’t put up a single Christmas decoration. Our home officially went on the market the day after Thanksgiving, and in our attempt to make the place look as spacious and generic as possible, we thought that our eclectic Christmas décor was the last thing we wanted to be the focus of our prospective buyers.

Last week Linc and I were looking through my phone at old photos of “Baby Lincoln,” which is oddly one of his favorite pastimes. I came across some pictures from the end of 2013, when I had Linc strapped to me with the baby carrier that he has since outgrown. As we set up the tree and hung the garlands, Lincoln fell asleep in the carrier and stayed asleep for over an hour.   It’s one of the only times he ever fell asleep on his own for the first year or more of his life.  Memories came rushing back to me as we looked at those photos. It was a Christmas of new traditions, of hope for the future, of fear that we might never get a full night’s sleep ever again. I can only hope that each Christmas is as special and stressful and everything in between as that one was.

Each year we subtly try to tell our families to cut back on the presents and other festivities, but we are severely outnumbered in that request. Now that we have this remarkable tiny human by our side, the spoiling has only increased, and I guess for good reason. He certainly is a blessing worth celebrating…and occasionally spoiling.

This year Audra and I are putting some parameters on our (hopefully) frugal Christmas shopping. All of our presents must meet at least one of the following criteria:

-Be local.
-Be useful.
-Be meaningful/have a story.
-Be homemade/handmade.

As of now, we think that we are done with our shopping, and as far we can tell, we’ve met these restrictions on every single gift.

If you are looking for a meaningful, story-rich, homegrown gift this holiday season, please consider gifting one of our Flower Subscriptions, or just treat.yo.self, girl.  Our chickens are basking in this warm weather and laying eggs like there is no tomorrow.  We have plenty of farm-fresh eggs available for $4/dozen should you need some for all of your holiday baking.  Call or email us if you’d like to pick some up from the farm.

Two Christmases ago we were hell-bent on keeping our home as clean and tidy as possible, on the slim chance that someone would want to tour the place with their realtor at a moment’s notice.  By that time, we had re-done everything we could think of with the house, and we were waiting on someone else to buy our move-in ready abode.  This year, we’re back to the beginning again as we finally take some time to do our first farmhouse improvements.  This weekend we decided to start doing some plaster repair work.  It looks like a hot mess right now, but by tomorrow the adhesive that we caulked into all those holes should be set and our 100-year-old plaster should be glued back against the lath as it should be.

This hallway might be freshly-painted by Christmas, or it might not be.  But the nice thing is, we’re not really in a rush.  Our house is full of twinkling lights and a tree full of ornaments, our doorways are strung with evergreen garland, and our fridge is stocked with like 45,000 eggs in the event of any upcoming zombie apocalypses.   It’s not a bad way to spend the lead up to Christmas and await the coming of another crazy/stressful/adventurous year on the farm.

We’d love to hear from you, our readers:  What kinds of things do you and your families do to make your holiday celebrations special, frugal, minimally stressful, or uniquely dysfunctional?