Merry Christmas / HappyHolidays / have a great few days off - whatever you celebrate, I hope you are having a joyful, relaxed and fun time.

Come visit me next week for my "Favourite Things 2013" (that's right, Oprah is not the only one who can do that; mine is even better and you don't have to buy anything to enjoy my favourite things).

I've been busy this week with freelancing and preparing for client meetings, so I thought I'd re-post something from my archives. Of course I spent so much time in my tumblr archives that I could have written a 1000 word post, but I found this piece I wrote for Yeah Write last year in December (and actually won that week!) and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

When we spent our first Christmas in Canada in 2008, I was amazed that people were allowed to go out into the forest and cut their own Christmas tree.

My sister and I actually did cut our own tree once in Germany, but it was totally illegal and someone who cut down a tree in the same spot we did got caught a few hours later. We had a blast though and ended up getting a little carried away; we came home with a 12' tree and had to cut off 4' to make it fit into the house... I blame my pregnancy hormones (I was pregnant with PJ at the time)!

When the time came to (legally) cut the tree for our first Canadian Christmas, the thrill was not quite there, so I just sent my husband to get the job done. This is what he came home with:

Yes, I am seriously writing a blog post about an office chair. But not just any office chair. A deluxe mesh task chair - the new home of my butt in my office.

I know, right?

After 6 years of sitting uncomfortably on a cheap chair, I am now sitting in style and with lumbar support...

At the beginning of this year, when I decided to go on a Personal Revelation Revolution, I started reading "Simple Abundance" by Sarah Ban Breathnach. While I'm sure the author is a very lovely lady, I was ready to slit my wrists after a few weeks of daily readings in the book - it just wasn't speaking to me at all. So I stopped and started reading Brene Brown's books, which I loved a lot. 

One thing I did take away from "Simple Abundance" though, was a series of questions the author asked her readers to work on; I wrote them down to ponder whenever the mood strikes. One of those questions is:

"Imagine moving into a new house. What are the absolute essentials you need in that house to be happy?" 

Do you ever feel like you just need to get away? At least for a few minutes of peace and quiet, otherwise you're totally going to lose your shit? No? Then you definitely don't have children. 

No matter how big or small the kids are, there comes a time in every mother's life when she just needs a break. Today I bestow some of my wisdom upon you and present you with 5 tell-tale signs that it's time for a break.

When I was a teenager I thought I had it really rough. I had my own room and always enough to eat - but let's face it: there are way more important things in teenage life, right? It was a real battle until my father agreed to let me use hair spray, make-up was out of the question and I was under no circumstances allowed to sew "my colours" onto my jeans jacket. It was the 80s for crying out loud and adorning a jeans jacket with your favourite teams, artists and whatnot was the shit to do. My father always said that if I was to "advertise" anything on my jacket, it would have to be his business....

I found and re-pinned this pin a little while ago; earlier this afternoon I felt really ambitious, so I followed the link and printed one of the monthly blog planners. Believe it or not, within 10 minutes I had my blogging plan set for the whole month - except for this very post...

What to write about, what to write about?