I've been documenting a bit of how I do Advent and Christmas over the past few weeks. But it's occurred to me that there are particular styles to living liturgically. Figuring out what style resonates with you is phenomenally helpful for liturgical living success! Here's a few of the basic styles:

The Food liturgical living person

This person likely either cooks at home most of the time, or generally likes to cook. Meal planning may or may not be their strong point, but they can totally handle throwing a dessert together with a week to a couple days notice! Likely enjoys browsing Pinterest for new recipes to try out. It helps to be an adventurous eater!

The Crafty liturgical living person

This person finds happiness in creating with their hands. May have a stash of various craft supplies, or just rescued recycling scraps waiting to be made into something marvelous. Experience with crafting techniques will vary, but enthusiasm for the attempt is a given. Likely enjoys adult coloring books.

The Bookish liturgical living person

This person has a book for every possible situation. This style will range from the Children's Literature enthusiast, to the Tolkein nerd, to Poetry lovers. Saints days, for the bookish style,  are best celebrated by being curled up with a cozy blanket and enjoying the words or stories that belong to that feast.

The Party Throwing liturgical living person

This person sees changes in the liturgical year, or any given feast day, as an excellent excuse to throw a party! Large or small, cocktail party or play date. Doesn't matter, they will be there! And will likely host. This person is probably an extrovert, but there will be the odd introvert among these party throwing liturgical livers.

Bonus Categories!
There are some life situations that will impact how your liturgical living style manifests in practice.

The Parenting liturgical living person

This is the person with the most available resources for their liturgical living (let's be real.) While this person has the needs and preferences of a tiny army to factor in, kids make the joy and wonder aspect of liturgical living easy and accessible.

The Single liturgical living person

This person has to wade through the flood of liturgical living resources that assume you are trying to celebrate with, and for, small children. However, the feasts and fasts are meant for everyone in the Church! It helps to join forces with a group of friends to do at least some celebrations in community. Own your tradition and allow for others to join in! You might find that celebrating with another family, a local religious order, or your roommates make for some wonderful experiences.

The Convert liturgical living person

This person may be brand new to Catholicism, Christianity, or religion in general. They may be suffering from convert fever ("Do. All. The. Things!") or from convert overwhelm ("Please don't let there be one more thing to add on my plate, sweet Jesus!") The beautiful thing about the liturgical year? It always comes back around! This isn't set in stone. You will live if you miss a feast day.
Little secret from a cradle Catholic? *whispers* No celebrates all of the feasts! Really.
Pick a thing, see styles above to get an idea of what is a good thing to start with for you, and just try it out!

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

Which of these styles is you? Are there any I forgot? What are some other categories that impact how someone celebrates the liturgical year?

The Mom's Side of Tips and Tricks for a Relaxed Christmastide

Last week I shared my December liturgical year calendar that I am using with my kids this year. But how to make those celebrations and traditions happen without feeling frazzled, stressed, and resentful? Here's what works for me!

Start with your easy thing

Everyone has their go to first thing when starting a new tradition. It typically falls along the lines of food, craft, activity, book.
I am a food person. I will almost always start a new celebration with food. Crafts will typically fall last in that list of things to add to celebrations for me. My ranking would probably go: food, activity, book, song, craft. I have learned this about myself and I take it into account when considering how to celebrate a particular feast, liturgical season, or other holiday. It puts my chances of success in a good place if I start with something I will probably enjoy!

Write it down

I'm a big believer in lists and charts, but even if you are a free form essay or graphic doodler kind of person, you should write down your ideas! Write down your plans, write down what worked and what didn't, write down what you want to change.
Nothing happens without a plan - you just need to figure out your best method of planning.

I start with free form lists. Lists of holidays, things to cook, movies to watch, books to read, activities to choose from - whatever I might want to consider for inclusion in our celebrations.

Then I map it out on a calendar. I see when each holiday falls, I write in when I would want to make different things, and I make sure I've left myself enough time to only have 1-2 extra things a day (max) to do. I prefer to have scheduled day to-dos instead of a giant list of holiday to-dos.

I make a log so I can jot down what we do each of the days, and review the results in free form after the holiday season. Then I close the book and move on. Don't dwell too hard on anything that didn't go as you envisioned!

Baking week

I started doing this last year, and I loved it! It let me get all of the massive baking done for a church fundraiser AND stock the freezer with cookie dough for Christmastide. Win!
The big secret is I take an entire week to do my baking. It's a process. That's what makes it work well.

Monday - I mix the dry ingredients for each cookie type and put it in a labeled gallon baggie.

Tuesday - Begin mixing the wet ingredients into 2-3 of the types. Split in half. Wrap each half in plastic wrap, stack, and place back in the baggie that it was in for dry ingredients, place in the fridge.

Wednesday - Mix the remaining cookie types into dough. Bake half of the dough from the types that chilled overnight in the fridge. The unbaked half of the dough gets left in it's labeled gallon baggie and put in the freezer for Christmastide.

Thursday - Bake the cookie types mixed on Wednesday. Save those halves of the dough in the freezer.

Friday - Deliver cookies. Enjoy that my dough mixing is done before December!

I can make a massive amount of cookies with this method with minimal stress.
I highly recommend figuring out how much of each ingredient you will need and stocking up in November. The sales are great right now for baking!

Work earlier than you think is necessary

That baking week? It's done the last week of November. That seems crazy early, but I have learned it is almost always better to work earlier rather than later if your goal is a relaxed Advent.

Outsource 

That baking that I do the night before the holiday? The St. Lucia buns and St. Nicholas day cinnamon rolls? Those are homemade, but I don't do most of the work. I use the bread machine to do most of it. Most of our favorite foods during this holiday season are things I can dump in a crockpot. If I didn't enjoy doing the cooking and baking I would probably just buy the roll from the store.

My husband does all of the grocery shopping, and most of the meal planning.

My kids help me with a lot of the Ember Days cleaning tasks.

I buy a lot of gifts off Etsy and Amazon, and make sure to include the cost of my time when considering if I should make something, buy it, or do without it.

Use technology and the gifts of others when offered. No one wants a frazzled mom for Christmas. They just want you.

Aim for free and use what you have

You know what my official craft is on Christmas? Cutting up our wrapping paper that just came off of gifts and making a giant wrapping paper chain. It's a cheap, re-use, project and provides for fun decorations through to Epiphany.

We wrap up 12 Christmas books, that we already own, every year. One gets unwrapped on each of the 12 Days of Christmas.

Look around your home and see what could become a tradition out of things you already have. That means you can have traditions that don't require extra shopping, and may even save you time and effort!

Make the journey the experience

We do a little bit one day and wait.
A little bit another day and wait.
That waiting is part of the beauty of Advent, and I think it's the true secret to a low stress Advent and restful Christmas season.

How do you keep your Advent low stress and Christmas restful? Do you do any of these tips or is it something radically different in your home? What are you changing this year?

How We Advent

It was requested some of my local mom friends that I write up our Advent and Christmas celebrations. I got as far as pulling it together for December, anyway!

I have some emergent and early readers in my house this year, so I put together this calendar for them to follow along with the season and know when we are doing what.

Here's what it all means!

December 1 - Cookie making 

This is not actually done only on December 1st. Our parish Altar and Rosary has their Sugar Plum Days fundraiser over the first weekend of December. So while I'm baking up my contribution for Cookies by the Pound, I save some dough in the freezer for our 12 Days of Christmas.
Because this is all about front end work for Christmas rest!

December 2 - First Sunday of Advent, Greenery goes up

We decorate in stages around here, and stage one is get up the greenery! Advent wreath, mantel garlands, door wreaths, etc. We have aimed to get our tree between the 1st and 3rd Sunday of Advent. Who knows when the actual tree will arrive!

December 6 - St. Nicholas Day

I make overnight cinnamon rolls that get stuck in the oven in the morning. The kids wake up to find their stockings filled by St. Nicholas. We follow a pretty simple system for deciding what goes in those stockings and that has worked well for our family. We'll watch the CCC movie The Boy Who Became Santa too.

December 8 - Immaculate Conception

It's a solemnity, so get thee to church! I've done slightly different things for this every year, so we'll see what it ends up being this year.

December 9 - Second Sunday of Advent, Lights go up!

If we have a tree by now, it gets lights. Lights get added to windows, garlands, where ever else we are doing them. This is our first winter in Amelia Hill House, so I have no idea exactly what will need to happen with lights. Adventure year!

December 12 - Our Lady of Guadalupe

I'll be honest and say that most of our observance for Our Lady of Guadalupe mostly involves watching the CCC movie on St. Juan Diego and maybe eating Mexican food. Probably a family rosary. But I'm from Dallas and this feast is still important for me.

December 13 - St. Lucia

This feast got so much more fun for us once we moved to Minnesota! I make St. Lucia Saffron Buns (kneaded and risen in the bread machine, and adapted for overnight by putting in the fridge for the last rise). We sing Santa Lucia, and read Kirsten's Surprise - the American Girl book about a Swedish girl and her family's life as immigrants in Minnesota. This particular book includes their frontier celebration of St. Lucia and my kids adore it.

December 16 - Gaudete Sunday, tree decorations go up

Gaudete is when we finish up the decoration portion of our Advent because....

December 19, 20, 21 - Ember Days

The winter Ember Days are just around the corner! You can read more about what the Ember Days are and how we observe them here.
This is my giant clean, sort, purge, front end of all house tasks. They're days of fasting and penance too as we prepare to welcome our hearts, minds, bodies, and homes for the coming Christ child and all that he might ask of us.

December 23 - Fourth Sunday of Advent

No big celebrations here. Our work is likely done, and all that is left is likely to be Christmas pageant rehearsal and last minute choir needs.

December 25 - It's Christmas and the great Christmastide begins! 

Here's a look back at last year's 12 Days of Christmas:

Our basic rules are: no school, no extra cleaning work, be open for hospitality, enjoy Christmas, and explore. We wrap up 12 Christmas books during Advent preparations, and the kids unwrap one each day. Holiday movie times, cookie baking (and eating), and good warm slow food are all big parts of this time.

We have some special days in there too!

December 27 - St. John's Day

This is our John's name day. I confused the traditions for his feast day with those of St. John the Baptist for a few years, and we did a bonfire on this day. But we don't have a good space for a fire in our new home, so it made sense to shift our celebrations. This year I think it would be fun to do a lot of reading (as he is a patron of printers and publishers) and make mulled wine in memory of St. John's legendary survival of an attempt on his life via poisoned wine.

December 30 - Feast of the Holy Family

In addition to considering this the feast day for my own vocation to family life, it is the patron feast day of our parish. No big plans, just enjoying our little family and our parish family.

December 31 - New Years Eve

We might actually get some use out of our punch bowl and make some Sylvester's punch! Pope Saint Sylvester has his feast day on this last day of the year, and many traditions have been baptized "Sylvester's". The kids have been wanting to make crackers since they saw them made in Christmas on the Victorian Farm. Maybe we'll make them, but I also see a high likelihood of just buying them. 

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If you would like to download a copy of the calendar for your home, you can do so here for free!

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What are the big Advent hallmarks in your home? What do your December plans look like?

State of the Blog

There are some changes already happening around here, and it seems only fair to clue y'all in!

1 

Monthly evaluation

I do this thing at the end of every month where I think back and decide what worked, what didn't, and what I can change to make all parts of my life better.

It's become more formal lately, and I now have a "What should I be doing?" discernment spread in my bullet journal where I ask myself what has fed me lately and what things have stressed me lately. I use those results to develop a spread called "Make a Change in *x month*"

2 

Results

October was personally a hard month where I had to accept that a lot of things weren't working. The things that were working surprised me. I very much enjoyed doing historical research on the house, getting to craft again, and exploring with the kids.
Things that stressed me included: pursuing opportunities that were not actually open to me, lack of rest, and sacrificing time to write blog content and social media that gets minimal interaction.

3 

The Changes

I ended up with a list of 16 changes to make in November. Many are small tasks to stop procrastinating about that will lessen my stress level, but there are some big decisions.

4 

About Theater

Earlier this week I wrote about the frustrations I've had trying to get established in the theater community here in the Twin Cities. In a sense I feel a bit deceived. Everyone told me how great the theater community was here. How many shows, spaces, companies. That is true - just not for young women.

So I'm taking a break.

A temporary, at least month long, break from the audition circuit heart ache.

A year of throwing myself at that stained brick wall requires a little healing.

5 

About this Blog

I realized in the past few months that I was spending a lot of time thinking and writing about topics that were getting seen by fewer and fewer people. There was one day with a total of 6 views. 6. Site wide.
Frankly that isn't worth my time.

So for the month of November I'm only writing when I want to - not to meet a pre-defined posting schedule.

I don't write this blog for the sole exercise of writing. There are bloggers like that, but that's not me. I write for connection. I write to create a jumping off point for discussions and engagement. That's the point for me. I don't want to be shouting into the wind.

6 

The Things I Will Be Doing

When I do write it will be because something needs to pour out of my heart and mind. Those pieces seem to resonate well with people, and they get written soooooo much faster than pieces I try and force out. Seems like a win-win.

I love responding to questions or requests! That's part of why I love speaking on panels and doing Q&As. Thinking on my feet is my jam, and probably when you're going to get the most concise answer before this over-thinker over-thinks it.

I will be using the time I would have spent preparing auditions, hunting for opportunities, and writing for prayer instead. I don't just want to release lots of free time, I want to make space for good and for God. Using prayer to fill those holes keeps me from letting busy work seep into that space.

I forgot how much I enjoyed taking my kids places and exploring together. Field trips are planned to be a bigger part of our month (as counter-intuitive as that sounds with a fresh layer of snow and ice out there.) It's something that feeds all of us.

7 

I'm Still Open

This is not a Lenten fast from blogging! I'm more than happy to continue to respond to messages and  requests. I'll happily write up a post that you would like to have (there's one coming up this month already!). I want to make sure I'm helping you, not adding to your noise.

If by some amazing miracle a theater show or company comes along with an offer for me, I'll probably jump on that opportunity. It's hard not to be pessimistic about the possibility after a year of No, but it could theoretically happen.

While I'll be home a lot more, I also want to be very open for hospitality. Reach out to all those people that have been on my "You're cool and I don't see you enough" list. It's a long list, y'all. Minnesotans are cool people.

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes.

I hope you'll stick around! 

What kind of things would you like to see me write about? Is there a topic that would feed you right now? Are you making any changes in your life right now?

An Acceptable Discrimination - Because I'm a Mother

There are certain things we knowingly, and at least some what willingly, give up to become mothers. For me those were things like getting to go out to a movie with my husband on a whim and sleeping in.

What I didn't expect to give up: respect for my mind, fair consideration, and space to grow my talents.

You see I have the misfortune of having talents, gifts, and loves that just can't be done solo, in my home, during nap time. I'm an actress, dancer, and all around theater person. A fundamental part of all of those things is they must be done in community. It's the nature of the art form. That fact is my downfall.

Because I'm a mother.

Because I'm a mother it's ok to demand that I not practice my skills for five, ten, forever years. "Maybe you can come back when your last kid is in Kindergarten?"

Because I'm a mother it's acceptable to pass me by for roles that I *knew* I was a perfect fit to play. By directors that I had a great relationship with up until the point that they learned my dark secret - my three sweet babies at home.

Because I'm a mother I can't possibly be thinking correctly about the glass ceiling I'm pounding against. Trust me people, it only looks clear to you. It's a stained brick wall to me.

In the theater mothers are invisible. They are the foils, the caricatures, only existing as a figure for a man (or more likely a boy) to rile against. Mothers can come back in their own right when they are "women of a certain age". Older and wiser. Not young and new and messy and dangerous. There's no place for me in that view.

Because I'm a mother I don't see my story told.

I'm told to sit down, keep my head down, accept that some vocations are just incompatible with performing. No one ever thought to ask me what would help.

Plenty of vocations have been thought "incompatible with motherhood" before: academia, full time work, manual work, entrepreneurial work. Each of those industries have gone through a reckoning of sorts, and for many it's not over. The performing arts haven't even started.

I keep talking about it. I keep being honest to anyone and everyone when the subject of my perpetual state of audition season comes up.
My friends and family say, "That's awful."
Theater people say, "That's awful." Because this state of affairs is not even an open secret, but a known fact in the theater.
Everyone knows, but they get to do something denied to me. They get to change the subject.

They can change the subject because this doesn't really impact them.
Leaving out the experience, talents, and stories of a whole class of people? No big deal!

What really saddens me is the complete lack of desire or energy toward changing this state of affairs. How can I tell my daughters "You can grow up to be anything you want" if by "anything" I mean "things socially acceptable to be pursued by women of your demographic."
How can I let this anti-mother prejudice stand without challenge if I want to raise girls to live their callings to the fullest?

Ways you can help

• Patronize shows with equal or greater number of female and male actors. Women can't get cast without female roles, and there is a drought of roles for young women. I seriously might scream if one more theater announces a season with shows of large all-male ensembles.
• Give feedback to your local theaters asking for shows about mothers. You want to know what plays are getting done right now that involve mothering or pregnant characters? Shows about Roe v. Wade. That's right, abortion has the market on stories about mothers right now. If you think women are about more than our reproductive organs, this should concern you. 
• Familiarize yourself with great plays written by female playwrights. There are classics beyond Shakespeare and modern gems that should be more well known. Here's a great list to get you started.
• Think beyond easily distributed art forms. If you are involved in artists groups, or other groups meant to support and build awareness for artists, be they Catholic, local, whatever - include some performing artists, please? I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to Catholic artists groups, etc. and been told "We really focus on those with a product at this time." I'm glad you have space y'all, I am, but can you make some room for the rest of us too?
• Grapple with your own unacknowledged prejudices. Basically, stop thinking anything a woman is called and gifted to do is impossible to reconcile with motherhood. Just stop it. That opinion is almost always formed by a lack of experience with the possibility OR a twisted idea that other women should have to struggle as you have struggled. Either way, not ok. Don't do it.

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I've written about the performing arts a good bit. Here are some highlights.

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What have been the creative ways you have pursued your gifts and talents while living a vocation to motherhood? Have you been supported in that pursuit? What could help you?