HHello! I hope you’re getting into the Christmas spirit. I’ve been enjoying finishing up my holiday decorating, and—true to form—I keep things pretty simple. Last year’s simple decor felt right, and this year I found myself tempted to “do more.” For a moment I imagined getting fancier, but after trying to add extra greenery to my entry table, console and mantel, I realized it didn’t feel like me. I prefer a touch of Christmas spread throughout the house rather than piling more onto every surface. So I gathered the extra greenery (leftover from our tree) and moved it outside. What a relief.
It occurred to me this week that if I felt pressure to style every corner for a perfect photo, I’d be stressed. I’m grateful that simplicity is what comes naturally to me—that keeps decorating enjoyable and allows me to be authentic here. I don’t bring in extra furniture, rearrange constantly, or over-style just to get a picture. I try to live and decorate the way I would whether I were blogging or not, and that helps keep things real and manageable.
If you push yourself to do things that don’t feel right for your season of life, it creates stress instead of joy. That uneasy feeling when you pull out the Christmas bins may be a sign that this isn’t the year to go all out—and that’s perfectly okay. Likewise, if you love every bit of holiday glitz and enjoy pulling out treasured ornaments, that’s wonderful too. The key is being true to yourself and your family, not following someone else’s ideal. For me, decorating is about preserving family traditions within the limits of my time and energy.
Even though I’ll be sharing our home on the Holiday Home Tours on Monday, I avoid the stress of creating Pinterest-perfect scenes by keeping the focus on decorating for our family. I want to share our real home—authentic, lived-in, and loved—rather than staging images that don’t reflect how we actually live. I want to love my home every day, not only for a photo.
What I really enjoy about preparing for Christmas is remembering I don’t need a showhouse—I want to create special memories. For our family, that means keeping simple traditions like choosing a real tree together. Last year we cut down a huge tree and enjoyed it without feeling pressure to decorate it elaborately. My son Luke loves the tradition of cutting down a real tree, and I do my best to keep that experience for him. We could have used faux trees from storage, which might have looked great in photos, but they wouldn’t have been the same for him.
Taking an hour to load up the dogs, drive to the tree farm and cut down a tree felt like time well spent. My son is fourteen, and I know these years of making memories together are limited. He doesn’t care about the cookie baking or which ornaments I choose—what matters to him is the family tradition of selecting and cutting the tree and a few other familiar rituals.
Ask yourself: what really matters to your family? The experiences we carry with us are what truly count. If I become cranky trying to meet unrealistic Christmas expectations, it’s because I’ve focused on the wrong things. We often put too much pressure on ourselves; we don’t need to do everything. Instead, do what matters most.
No matter how you decorate—whether you go all out or prefer simplicity, whether you blog or don’t—remember the goal is creating memories for your family, not maintaining a show home. There’s a balance to be found: don’t make the holidays so simple that they lose magic, and don’t make them so complicated that they become exhausting. As cliché as it sounds, remember the reason for the season. It’s easy to get lost in decor, baking and gifts and miss what your family really needs.
So this weekend, let go of guilt about things you don’t have to do, and find simple ways to make lasting memories. Even if you’re celebrating alone this year, give yourself the gift of a meaningful Christmas.