Marriage Tip #6

Christmas has come and gone all too quickly, I am afraid. When I was a kid, everything seemed to magically slow down around the twinkling Christmas tree, and now time comes flying at us and runs me over. Never the less, this Christmas was one I will always cherish.

It was our second Christmas together as a married couple, and we just passed our one year anniversary this month! It's crazy to think how quickly a year has gone by, and I know the second will come just as swiftly. This time of year is our absolute favorite, too.

Not just because it's our anniversary, but because it's Christmas! The time to celebrate the birth of our Savior, and a time that both Zach and I have adored since we were small. It's been a blessing to create our own memories and traditions together this year!

Which brings me to my next marriage tip...take time to create your own traditions with your spouse!

I promise you, it can be a lot of fun.

Your traditions don't have to be anything incredibly elaborate, though if that's your style, go for it! We started a few of our own traditions this year, and I'm confident that we will continue to add our own as the years go on.

Since becoming a Georgia peach, I have learned that the south takes tradition very seriously. Which isn't a bad thing. I actually really have enjoyed being a part of Zach's families traditions, which inspired me to think of our own traditions to add to the mix!

Here are some of the traditions that we created this year, and some ideas of what you can do, too!

1. Made popcorn and cranberry garland while watching a Christmas movie. Yup, old fashioned air popped pop corn and fresh cranberries! Get some string, a needle and get to creating! It's seriously a lot of fun, just don't poke your fingers!

2. Visited Stone Mountain Christmas. This is a local attraction in Atlanta, and one that Zach has gone to for years! It was really special to go with him as his wife this year. Find a local Christmas or holiday event that you guys can make into a yearly tradition to attend!

3. Host our own Christmas party! This was a first for me! And my little hostess heart was so happy to have so many dear people in our living room. We had an ornament exchange party with a hot chocolate and dessert bar. Really easy to do, and everyone gets something to put on their tree!

4. Have a home cooked Christmas dinner. We debated whether we wanted to do this Christmas Eve or Christmas day, but this year it ended up being Christmas day, and it was wonderful! Be sure to get all your ingredients before hand, and make a nice dinner for your spouse!

5. Watch your favorite Christmas movie together (or several). Zach and I have watched countless Christmas movies (A Christmas Story is one of our all time favorites). You can grab some hot chocolate, curl up in some cozy Christmas pajamas, and relax together!

There are just a very few ideas of some traditions you could start on your own. Like I said, they could be more elaborate, or really simple! The point is that you are intentionally making memories together, and that it means something to you both!

Make it a point to invest time and love into your relationship with your spouse this year. Traditions can be created any time of year, not just the holidays, and it can create a lifetime of wonderful memories ahead!

What's your favorite tradition with your sweetie?

Holiday Date Night Ideas

Okay, I know we have done a few date night idea blogs before, but this may be my favorite set. Because seriously, you can’t get much more romantic than the holidays, it’s just oozing with potential for fun ideas!

So grab a pen and paper and your steaming mug of hot chocolate and start plotting some fun holiday dates to do with your honey!

1.    Find a local Christmas event in your area and go to it! Atlanta is a hopping city, and I know there are a TON of free Christmas events going on the entire month. Some old neighborhoods are having candlelight walk through’s, there are square lightings, Christmas tree lightings, stores have pictures with Santa, and basically everywhere is decorated. So find some local events and go to one!

2.    Make your own hot chocolate bar and rent a new Christmas movie. Or find a cheesy Christmas movie to watch on TV! But go get a box of hot chocolate (or make your own home made), some mini marshmallows, whip cream, candy canes, and whatever other treats you want to have for your hot chocolate bar! Set it up on your table and make it look fancy, and then pop in your Christmas movie and snuggle while drinking your hot chocolate!

3.    Go to a local Christmas attraction. Like the first idea, there are probably some great Christmas themed attractions around you! Even when I lived in Arizona, they had zoo lights, a neighborhood decked in lights, etc. Atlanta has Stone Mountain Christmas, Lake Lanier Lights, Olympic Centennial Park is decked out….seriously there are so many options around Christmas. Find a place you both love and go make a new memory!

4.    Go ice skating! Bundle up and find your local ice skating rink, rent some skates and laugh your way through the night. Finish it off with a coffee date at your favorite coffee place to warm up!

5.    Build a fire and make s’mores. Don’t forget the blanket to cuddle under either (but don’t catch it on fire)! Whether you have a fire place, a fire pit or somewhere to make your own fire, grab some s’more fixings and have some fun!

6.    Bake and decorate cookies together. This is a great one to have right at home! Go out and shop for all your ingredients you need to make sugar cookies from scratch, make your dough (but be sure to have a Christmas movie on hand to watch while the dough chills!), then cut out your shapes, bake and decorate! You might end up even having some frosting wars. Just have fun with it (you can always clean up later)!

7.    Drive around and look at Christmas lights while listening to Christmas music and drinking hot chocolate (or coffee, or cider, whatever you like)! Find some nice neighborhoods that have lots of light displays and cruise on through, admiring all the lovely twinkling lights while staying warm and cozy next to your honey!

8.    Make a no-sew blanket together and then watch a Christmas movie! These blankets are super easy to make (you can check out a Pinterest tutorial here), and are incredibly warm! All you need in two pieces of fleece cut to two yards a piece, then cut and tie it up! Super simple, and it’s something you can keep using!

9.    Decorate a Christmas mug together or make an ornament together. Tap into your creative potential with your sweetheart! Go to the craft store, and pick out a blank mug and some ceramic markers, or get an ornament you can paint or decorate and then go home and have some creative fun!

10.  Trim a tree! If you haven’t already decorated your Christmas tree, make a date of it! Go out to dinner, then either go get your tree or dig it out of the closet, put it up and decorate! Share stories about any ornaments you may have and why you love them. Or you can even pick out a new ornament together and put it on! You can also make your own cranberry-popcorn garland to adorn your lovely Christmas tree.

There you have it, ten super easy, amazingly fun Christmas-time date night ideas! Seriously, this time of year is prime date night time! Don’t skip it just because things are busy. Invest in each other, invest in your relationship, have conversations about what you love about this time of year and make a new tradition with each other!

Take advantage of the whimsy and romance of the season and sweep your sweetheart off your feet with some fun date night ideas. Do you have your own favorite Christmas time date? I would love to hear what it is!

What’s your favorite Christmas season date night idea?

Mr. & Mrs. Holiday "To Do" List

This is my absolute favorite time of year, hands down. God captures my heart in so many simple ways during the season of fall all the way through New Years, but he does it extraordinarily so during the Christmas season.

The twinkling lights make my eyes sparkle, and drinking warm hot chocolate curled up under a blanket on the couch brings warmth to my soul. Things like a crackling fire in the fireplace, watching really cheesy Christmas movies (yes, including the Hallmark Channel), having a Christmas playlist constantly playing from Pandora, and decking our halls with Christmas cheer make the top of my list as well.

Honestly, I could go on forever about all of the reasons I love this time of year, and all of the things I want to do to make it special every day for the whole season. But, as I am here to only write a blog, and not a novel, I will keep it short and concise!

Zach and I will be celebrating our second Christmas together as a married couple this year! We are thrilled to not only celebrate our one year anniversary, but celebrate Christmas as well. So of course that means we have our own “to do” list for the holidays of things that we want to do together!

Here are some of our top ones this year…

1.    Take our one year wedding anniversary “weekend getaway.” Our plan this year is to visit Helen, Georgia! We will be staying at the lodge at Unicoi State Park, where we got married a year ago! The city of Helen is always decked out in lights, so we can’t wait to walk around and make some fun memories.

2.    Visit Stone Mountain Christmas! We don’t live very far from the super Atlanta attraction of Stone Mountain Park, and lucky for us, they do it up BIG for Christmas! This was my first year to go, and I must say, it’s spectacular! If you are in the area, you must go.

3.    Make popcorn and cranberry garland for our Christmas tree. It’s a simple thing, but we found it so fun and it was a cheap way to add some festivity to our home, and a great date!

4.    Bake and decorate Christmas cookies! Both Zach and I love to bake…especially Christmas cookies. We will be making a bunch before Christmas to share!

5.    Have a Christmas ornament exchange party. We did this for the first time this year, and it was an absolutely blast! We set up a hot chocolate bar, had some treats and invited friends and family into our home to exchange ornaments! We will definitely be doing this again next year.

6.    Watch “A Christmas Story”. And many other of our Christmas favorites! But especially this movie…we both love it and it has a special place in our hearts. (“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”)

7.    Have our own Christmas morning celebration. Christmas day this year will be spent with Zach’s family, which is so incredibly special. But we also want to start our own Christmas day traditions too, so we will have our own small little Christmas celebration together on Christmas morning!

8.    Drive around and look at Christmas lights together with hot chocolate. Seriously, what’s better than seeing some fancy houses with amazing Christmas light displays while drinking hot chocolate? Not much, I would say.

9.    Read the Christmas story together. We love the Christmas season, and even more so the REASON for the season. It’s easy to get caught up in the busy-ness and even the fun things to do, but it’s good to slow down and really remember why we celebrate Christmas…the birth of Christ!

10.  Visit Arizona! This one won’t be done before Christmas, but we hope to visit my family in Arizona around the beginning of January and celebrate Christmas with everyone then!

While it might seem silly to plan out things like this, I absolutely love it. It gives us things to focus on and be intentional about, and we are creating traditions for our family and how we spend the holidays together and the memories we make from that will be priceless!

What’s one of your favorite holiday traditions that’s on your “to do” list this year?

Marriage Tip #4

“I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

Six extremely powerful, weighted words. Sometimes they are easy to say because we know without a doubt we are in the wrong. Other times they are bitter and hard to get out because we don’t want to be wrong, and our pride is welling up. But these six words are like a healing salve in a marriage relationship.

I can’t even count the amount of times that I have had to come to Zach and tell him I’m sorry, and ask for his forgiveness. I can be quick to speak, slow to listen, and back seat drive just a little too much (but I’ve gotten better!). Sometimes it hurts to say those little words, but other times, it’s incredibly freeing and like a breath of fresh air.

There is no doubt about it, these words are powerful in marriage, and my fourth marriage tip is to freely use these words in your relationship.

Do not be slow to say them and let bitterness grow a root in your heart. Don’t say them insincerely, but actually mean it. Put aside your pride, lay aside your differences and find resolve.

Every day I feel like I’m learning how to love my sweet husband Zach better. Some days I get it right, other days, even after the prayer has left my lips I get it horribly wrong. I am not a perfect person, and neither is he. When you bring two imperfect people into one relationship in marriage, you bring a lot of stuff you have to work through together, and you have to say “I’m sorry” a lot.

But, even though it can hurt your pride to say it sometimes, “I’m sorry” and “will you forgive me” opens the flood gates of healing in a relationship, or can, if you let it. There have been days where Zach and I get started on the wrong foot, and we have to stop, talk through what’s happening, and ask literally if we can just “start the day over.”

Of course we can’t turn back time, but it may quite literally mean just re-saying “good morning” and committing to each other that we are starting on a new foot together.

Marriage has brought out so many lessons for each of us. It reveals how truly selfish we can be, because you are not living for only one person now, you are both one, but you have two people. That causes friction, conflict, and just LIFE to happen.

But the key is to recognize what is going on, to stop fighting each other and fight what the root is. Say you’re sorry, drop it, and move forward. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. Don’t hold onto things, but let them go and be free with your spouse.

The bottom line…don’t let pride, bitterness, or stubbornness get in between you and the one you love. When something happens, immediately bring it before them if you can, and ask for forgiveness, and let the healing begin.

What about you? Is it hard or easy for you usually to say you’re sorry?

Making Marriage Pop

Being married over nine months definitely does not make me an expert in all things marriage. I feel like I’m learning something new every single day. There’s always some new facet about Zach that I learn, some quality and characteristic unearthed in him that makes me love him even more. Of course we have our days where we miscommunicate, it’s a struggle to get on the same page, and we have our bickering.

But I have found that marriage is one of the most beautiful, hard, precious and wonderful things I have experienced. It has stretched me, grown me and God has used it to show me new sides of his face.

As Zach and I have started sharing and living life together since our wedding day in December, we have found certain things that help us communicate better, stay connected, and growing closer to one another. And while we have only been married 9 months, these are things that we hope to carry on until the Lord takes us home, and things that you can try in your marriage as well.

Here is a short list of some of the things we regularly do in our marriage to keep things popping!

1. Compliment each other. Words of affirmation are near the top for both of our love languages, so it is important for us to build each other up with words. But even if words of affirmation don’t “fill your love tank” it’s always nice to hear a compliment! We have made it a habit in our nightly ritual before we go to bed to give a compliment to the other from the day, and then pray before falling asleep. It’s a little thing, but it means the world. 

2. Kiss for 10 seconds, AT LEAST once a day. Remember how when you were dating it was hard to resist a kiss from your special someone? Well keep those flames alive in your marriage and give your spouse a smooch they’ll remember all throughout the day! Really, we all have ten seconds, and it can draw your hearts together.

3. Set aside a date night every week. Just because you are married does not mean you stop dating or pursuing each other. The opposite should be true! We need to be studying our spouses, continuing to learn and pursue their hearts. Your date doesn’t have to be extravagant, but set aside that intentional time with each other.

4. Play together. Whether it’s your favorite board game (ours is Scrabble), taking a hike (we love the mountains!), walking around town, or grabbing some water guns and having an all out water fight, don’t forget how to play with your spouse. Don’t forget how to laugh and have fun with each other. Laughter is some of the best medicine around, especially for marriage!

5. Grow together. Find something that you both can learn together! Currently, Zach and I are going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and learning how to be good stewards of our money. Whether it’s something like that, or reading through a book together, or listening to something together, find time to grow together individually and as a couple.

6. Ask each other questions.  Every now and then Zach and I will ask each other questions. Things like “how can I love you better?” and “what’s one thing I can do for you this week that will really mean a lot to you?” Learning to communicate is so vital and important, and you need to check up on your relationship every once in a while to get on the same page, and be honest with one another.

7. Set a goal together and go after it! I love goals. I love to set them, and I love to reach them (who doesn’t?)! When I married Zach, I was used to setting goals for myself, but since we got married we have learned that it is important to dream together and set goals together! So every few months we sit down over coffee and write out our dreams and goals. We dream big, and we also set goals realistically. It could be as simple as our goal of going to an apple orchard this fall to pick apples, or all the way up to something like paying off a credit card entirely. Goals and dreams are important to set and reach together, just as much as individually!

There you have it, just a few of the points that I have picked up on over the past nine months in our marriage. I feel so incredibly blessed by the man God brought me to marry, and I am thankful for the relationship that we have. Learn to appreciate what God has given you in your spouse, and build them up in that!

Take some of these ideas and try them yourself! And I want to hear from you, dear reader! What’s one of your marriage tips?