Save Our Xmas Sanity

What we want for You!

2008-11-10T14:39:16+11:00

May Peace be your gift at Christmas
and your blessing all year through!

~Author Unknown

Peace - our wish for you.

The reason we write Save Our Sanity: The Christmas Calm Manual.

We want for you a stress-free festive season.

We want for you to find gift giving a joy. Not a chore.

We want for you to enjoy time spent with friends and loved-ones.

We want for you laughter-filled days, and the excitement of a young child's Christmas (whether or not there are young children in your life right now).

We want for you the meaning of the season - Peace. Joy. Goodwill to All.

You deserve it.

The Media Come Calling

2008-11-06T18:29:27+11:00

For those of you who are raving fans of our little sanity-saving book, you won't be surprised to hear the media are starting to sniff us out.

There's one really exciting sniff that's come from overseas , but more about that in a later post!

Today Chris was interviewed on Light FM morning radio in Melbourne about Christmas Stress, what our surveying of the public tell us is causing the stress, and some of the many ways SOS can help bring on your calm this Christmas.

The link to the podcast of the program's highlights is at the end of their blog. Of course, SOS made it to the highlights so why not go over and have a listen. Chris' interview starts about one third of the way through the podcast.

In the meantime, we're trying our little techo brains to get our own recording of the interview up on SOXS for everyone to hear!

More news soon as we all start readying our Calm techniques for this year's festive times!

Confessions of Reformed Bah-Humbugger

2008-10-11T09:38:03+11:00

Who cares how many days there are till Christmas?

I certainly don't!

Firstly, because there'll always be some magazine, department store, or website to keep me informed!

Secondly, these days the onset of the pre-Christmas hype doesn't send me spinning into a haze of horror (and reaching for the gin bottle).

What's Your First Reaction?

What happens for you when you first see

Tinsel on the shelves in the supermarkets?
Signs in the butcher reminding you to order your turkey/ham?
Letterbox advertising and mail order catalogues with Christmas gift ideas and decorations?
Signs and articles about the Creeping Proximity of Christmas?

Well I know that for me the usual reaction is dread!

Dread, like when your innards feel like they're dropping down to your feet in a matter of seconds (and you're not going down in an elevator).

Dread, like when you were caught talking in line-up at school and got sent to the principal's office. (Sister Silvester wielded a mean thin bamboo cane, I can tell you!)

Dread mixed with anger, like when you've forgotten something you promised yourself you'd remember. (Like that endless promise you make to yourself that you'll Christmas shop at the sales during the year. Doh! I forgot AGAIN.)

Dread, like when you can see the car crash coming and can't AVOID it.

And what do I do when the dread happens?

Denial has always been a goody for me. But of course, the longer you remain in denial the closer Christmas gets, and the more the internal anxiety builds. Then suddenly it's the week before Christmas and the dam wall bursts and I'm overcome with tasks, tiredness, tears and terror.

I Hate To Gloat But ...

... NOT THIS YEAR!

I had my first sighting of Christmas the other day. (Hmm, thanks Karen)

And the familiar dread rushed in as it's learned to do over so many years. And the panicky feeling started to rise in my chest. That sick feeling lurched around my belly. When suddenly (and terribly surprisingly) my BRAIN kicked in.

What's Different?

I heard this cool, sooooooothing voice reminding me that I don't need to dread Christmas any more. (No! I don't really hear VOICES, I'm not THAT bad.) It was my own voice. (Now that I'm a Christmas Calm Angel.)

The voice? It was some positive self-talk from my own little self-protecting angel reminding me that I now have new habits and new expectations about managing Christmas.

You see I took a dose of my own medicine and worked my way through my OWN copy of Save Our Sanity, The Christmas Calm Manual. I changed my thinking. I changed my planning. I gave denial a good kick up the backside. I looked after myself with rewards for work well done, and plenty of destressing techniques. And Christmas ran smoothly. And again last year!

So! Now that I'm immunised against the effects of that familiar dread feeling, I'm ready to be YOUR Christmas Calm Angel.

I know there are plenty of people like me out there, with their heads buried in the Sand of Denial and hoping for some Fairy to come and fix it!

Sound Familiar?

Well, our Christmas Stress Test is still available and plenty of people have started taking the test.

But if you know that you can't face another year of all that stress, then maybe it's time to think about getting your own copy of Save Our Sanity: The Christmas Calm Manual. The Calm Manual is here to save you all, one frazzled woman at a time.

The countdown to Christmas 2008 has officially begun!

2008-09-18T13:04:30+10:00

Can you believe that in less than 100 days it will be Christmas?

Apparently we crossed the 100-day line earlier this week...

How does that make you feel? We're no longer talking months to go, we're talking in days. Scary stuff for those who stress about Christmas.

Of course, that's not us. We're not stressed or scared by the approach of the silly season. Nah.

We're in total. denial.

Chris and I were talking earlier today, and as we made plans for SOS and counted up the days left in 2008, we both recognised those physical changes that indicate a rise in stress levels - a faster heartbeat being the main indicator (without any strenuous housekeeping or dog walking as an excuse).

Of course, recognising that the mere mention of the approaching imminence of that day in December causes us stress is the very first step in healing and changing the outcome this year.

We want to be calm, in control and organised.

And it IS do-able.

Our Challenge to You

Set your intentions now.

How do you want to be for the next ninety-something days?

We're sure that you aren't putting your hand up and saying you want to be stressed... so what is it you DO want?

Peace, love and goodwill to all?

Calm and organised and feeling like you're in control, like us?

Joyful?

Relaxed?

Determined to have a simple, stress-free, laughter filled Christmas - and that means the whole lead up to it, as well as the day?

Please leave us a comment and let us know what your intention is. Write it down. Post it prominently. Say it aloud to yourself every day.

And don't forget to subscribe to our 'feed' to get all our hints and tips for a calm Christmas direct to your inbox or feedreader (that's it - up there in the top left hand corner of this page).

Save Our Sanity: The Christmas Calm Manual - designed specifically to help you sail into Christmas, stressless and chaos-free - buy now and get a head start on a Calm Christmas 2008!

Who Realised Gift-Giving Had Rules?

2007-12-03T16:20:57+11:00

Over at OrganisedChristmas.com, I found a great article that fires a shot through some of our gift-giving thinking.

They’re seldom acknowledged and rarely discussed: the unwritten rules of gift giving. Even if we don’t talk about them, “the rules” determine what we give, how much we give, and to whom we give. They govern everything from the office Secret Santa exchange, to classroom gifts, to a family morning under the Christmas tree.

Problem is, “unwritten” means that gift-giving rules are subject to interpretation—both in our own minds, and in our dealings with others.

First, if you don’t understand why you gift as you do, it’s easy to enter the land of the absurd: making a midnight raid on the supermarket’s toy aisle when you discover that one child’s stocking holds fewer gifts than his brother’s. Unexamined gift-giving assumptions lead to gifting decisions that can violate your own values—and worse, those decisions can appear to operate from nowhere! [more]

The Unwritten Rules of Gift-Giving gives you plenty of food for thought about how and why we come to be giving gifts to the people we do. It certainly allows you to think before all your gift-giving and possible guilt and angst have pooled into a sanity- breaking December 25th.

Or at the very least it might be fuel for new decisions and negotiations for next year!

Sometimes Tradition isn't all it's cracked up to be!

2007-11-30T17:42:11+11:00

Do you find Christmas whirls around quicker and quicker every year?

Sometimes it seems like you've barely caught your breath and it's Christmas again!

And sometimes, the whirling can mean we just pick up the same old habits and traditions from last year, the year before, and even several decades ago!

My year has whirled this year.

The week before Christmas last year, our son Lovable Geek and his girlfriend Miss GG announced their engagement.

We were having a massive Christmas last year - all four generations of my family gathering for the first time.

I remember being excited at the engagement, but ever so slightly frustrated at having to refocus on engagements, when I had so much to think about at Christmas! (Alright! So I'm not a perfect mother! At least I'm honest!)

This year has been the Year of the Wedding. So, the year has flown! And the wedding was last week.

So here we are with a very different Christmas coming up. Two of our three sons live interstate. Having just been visiting for the wedding, they won't be able to return here for Christmas. They've both followed lovely ladies to opposite sides of the continent from us now! So they're starting up new lives and traditions or picking up another family's influences and traditions.

Some humans can be so comforted by traditions that they can forget that they are not necessarily sacred.

All old traditions were new once!

They all had a starting point. They were all created because someone had a need to do something a certain way. Perhaps it was even a need to do it differently from something that had been familiar for many years.

In other words traditions are there for use until there time is up, and then you create new ones to suit the new occasion.

Traditions are meant to evolve!

Rituals are symbolic gestures to mark important occasions and people. But rituals and traditions have structures that can be twisted, tweaked or even discarded once they reach their use-by date.

At Christmas time we tend to be steeped in traditions and habits - many of them WELL past their use-by date!

The classic example in Australia is the rich warm winter-comfort food of roasts, baked veges, and plum puddings.

Those dishes were ideally suited to European Christmases, but are SO unsuited to our own hot Aussie Christmas. We live in a world where fresh produce abounds and seafoods and picnics/barbecues are standard fare for our summers!

So why maintain the tradition? Usually because someone is scared of change, and protests so loudly, like any good squeaky wheel, until attention is paid to their desires. Often that person isn't the one sweating over the hot stove in a hot kitchen on a hot summer's day!

Traditions are often a cause of as much stress for some as they are a comfort for others.

Who deserves to have their say more? Hmm! Bears thinking about, doesn't it?

So what traditions do you have at Christmas that are passed their Use-By Date? What are YOU going to do about them?

Make Your Melbourne Christmas Easy

2007-11-29T14:34:02+11:00

We're rather excited to announce that we've been able to entice our friend and favourite Professional Organiser, Angela Esnouf of Creating Order From Chaos, to work with Chris and deliver a ...

... Make Your Christmas Easy Workshop in Melbourne.

So IF YOU:

find Christmas spells S-T-R-E-S-S?
are desperately seeking Christmas Calm?
yearn to enjoy Christmas for the first time in a long time?
want some simple no-stress powerful tips on organising your Christmas?
know some of your Christmas traditions have passed their use-by date?
feel ready for a laugh about Christmas?

THEN

Chris and Angela will give you an Intensive on Christmas Calm and Organisation

In just 90 minutes, you'll have some Christmas Cheer and start feeling easier and ready to face Christmas this year!

Where?       Vermont South
When?          Thursday December 6th
Time?          7.30-9.15
Cost?             $50
Bookings?       Angela or phone 0403 164 468
                     Chris or phone 03 9877 1469

All who attend will receive take-away tips sheets and to-do lists.

will be available for sale.

There'll also be some SECRET giveaways!

Book now as numbers are strictly limited

Romance that will please you both!

2007-11-26T16:20:49+11:00

With a Relationship Advisor and a Calm Coach as your co-authors of Save Our Sanity (The Christmas Calm Manual) you could be sure we'd sniff out ideas to make people feel great.

This simple and incredibly romantic gesture will please any partner whose prepared to see what's in it for him!

I have a small artificial Christmas tree that fits perfectly on the nightstand in my bedroom. I decorate it with tiny white lights (great mood lighting at night!) and hang 12 small pieces of paper that are rolled up and tied with a piece of gold ribbon. On each piece of paper I write a special message such as ... [more]

This is one of the more delightful ways you can look after YOU in the chaotic period that is so often Christmas!

I'll definitely be taking up this idea!

Decorating a Tree for Novices or the Decoratively Challenged!

2007-11-16T13:23:34+11:00

While browsing through a Target catalogue called Christmas Wish List 2007, I discovered an excellent two-page spread of 6 steps to decorating Your Christmas Tree.

Now some of you may sneer at me even mentioning this! "Surely everyone knows how to decorate a Christmas Tree." you might think.

But others of you will know that not every person is given decorative genes and for some people getting a Christmas tree to look good seems totally BEYOND them!

Here at Save Our Christmas Sanity we are always on the look out for ways for our readers to get all the help they need to make their Christmas Calm, so I decided to research whether Target had this info anywhere online.

Target are no marketing dummies, so of course these two pages were very easy to find.

So for those of you who have secret fears of looking like idiots because you can't decorate a tree then here's your answer!

Page 1 - Steps 1&2
Page 2 - Steps 3-6

Of course, it's promoting some Target products which you may/may not wish to buy but it has some good solid ideas in there all the same!

The catalogue also has a very simple description on wrapping pressies as well if you need it.

Of course the thing to remember about Decorating a Christmas Tree or Wrapping a Present is that you just need to do the best you can! No more, no less!

My personal piece of advice?

LESS is MORE!

Christmas Shopping Online

2007-11-11T07:00:00+11:00

Last year, I did about a third of my Christmas gift shopping online. And it was so successful that this year I'm planning on doing way closer to all of it online. I really, really dislike crowds. And I hate the way people get when they are frazzled, stressed and strung out about getting their shopping done. The shopping malls become the things nightmares are made of.

So imagine my delight when I found a blog site dedicated to online Christmas shopping! It hasn't been going very long, but already I like what I am reading - this ones bookmarked for regular reading in the next couple of months.

The Online Christmas Shopping Guide.

"Let’s face it. The holiday season can be riddled with stress and worry, especially when you haven’t properly alloted time for it. There’s the dilemma of having to attend too many office parties, the dread of in-laws showing up on your doorstep, or just a general worry over what must be prepared at home (to let your friends know your not Ebeneezer Scrooge). The one thing you can do to avoid adding to stress is online Christmas shopping because at least knowing your shopping is taken care of will free up enough time to prepare for the other items on your Xmas agenda!"

We like where they are coming from, don't you?

When Santa gets stuck for ideas

Here's a quick way to get your Christmas gift giving handled