A Tradition I Look Forward to Every Year

Back in the day when "mommy bloggers" were enjoying their moment in the sunshine there were loads of collaborative opportunities designed to inspire, share and build community. Recently I spotted some familiar names in Facebook were "Blogtober" where you share a new post every day in October.

This creates a good habit for regular writing, there are often theme ideas, and of course you can share what you've written with the group. I've ignored such things for a while as I've been feeling a little meh about writing for the joy of it, focussing on earning an income. But seeing these names from the last decade and longer inspired me to have a go.

So here we go - I'm almost certainly not going to manage every day what with all my husbands medical appointments and other family comitments, but I thought I'd start with a prompt suggested by the very lovely Jenny at Midwife and Life and tell you about a tradition I look forward to every year.

Now I'll warn you, this does involve me mentioning the C word. Yes, I know Christmas is still months away but this tradition started a few years ago when my eldest daughter and I popped into a garden centre for something and discovered a whole explosion of twinkly lights, tinny festive music, glitter and a host of colour themed trees.

We were inspired to pick a colour theme for our own decor for that year then had fun sourcing baubles, crackers, artificial flowers and table decor to add to what we already had.

Previously I've even picked up bits in Jumbo in Paphos - a hellish (to some) blend of Ikea and Poundland where I can easily end up with a trolleyful of things I didn't know I needed until I entered the one way system into this giant two story store.

If you can ignore the mind melting music featuring squeaky voiced children singing in Greek there are bargains to be had. So that's why I was in there last year video calling my daughter who is at Uni in Birmingham to gain her approval for artificial flower picks which cost between £5-10 in the UK and around £1 in Jumbo.

Mostly though the reason I love this tradition is its the perfect opportunity to spend time with my daughter. She comes home during her autumn reading week. We visit the garden centre to choose our colour theme for the year then scour charity shops and budget stores to find accessories. One year the crackers we spotted in the garden centre inspired the theme, in other years we might see baubles we love.

We enjoy chatting as we browse, a nice coffee or lunch and it's a wonderful bonding experience. Then at Christmas we (well, mostly she) creates a gorgeous tablescape and decorated tree which features old favourites with all the memories they prompt and some lovely new things. It doesn't cost much and I, at least, get an enormous amount of pleasure from the whole thing.

Just yesterday I spotted on Facebook that our local garden centre had opened their Christmas area. I sent her a screenshot and was delighted to see she still seems as excited as me to revive the tradition for another year.