Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄 I hope you all had a joy filled Christmas day! And even if you struggled through the day, which is sometimes our reality with unfulfilled hopes and broken families, I hope that you could focus on the joy of Jesus even if your Christmas was filled with sadness or did not meet your expectations in some way.

Grandma and Grandpa came to our house for Christmas this year and the tree looked like it was going to explode once they added all their presents. The kids had a good day and the day went fairly smoothly for me with meal prep and keeping everyone fed.

What were my best Christmas presents this year? Look in the tree branches and you’ll see one of them. It was such a treat to get Homesteading Family’s new gluten-free book in the mail on Christmas Eve. 📖 Many people put in so much work to bring it about. My contributions of developing the recipes was done over a year ago so seeing it finally come together in print was a such a nice Christmas present!

But as nice as it was to see this book in print, I told my husband that the thing I really wanted for Christmas this year is a week to just be a house wife and putter.

We moved in May and spent most of our summer getting the new house liveable inside. Once the new homeschool year and kids activities were in full swing, I’ve barely been able to keep up with the basics much less getting the house organized the way I want them, or having time just to stop and think for that matter. Most of the unpacking is finally done now but the organization and systems are not in place yet at our new house, particularly in the kitchen, apothecary, and garden areas.

So my husband and I are taking advantage of having grandma and grandpa around and plan to go out to lunch for a planning session between the two of us to set our goals and what we hope to accomplish at the new house for the upcoming year. Then we have planned to delay the start after the first of the year so that I can have a week with no school to just putter! Yay!

The kids will help with some of the meals and I’m on purpose not going to go anywhere so that I can just be at home. I even stocked up on groceries last week so I don’t have to go to the store either. I just want to stay home. I’ve been wanting this for so long and I’m so excited!

I hope some of you have found time to putter a bit over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday as well. I think puttering is becoming a lost art which is sad. Puttering is something that brings the heart of the housewife, her creativity, and beauty into the home.

Merry Christmas 🎄 and Happy New Year 🎉 everyone!