If you feel like the holiday season came sooner this year — along with the holiday ads, the holiday sales, the Mariah Carey videos, and the holiday pressure, it’s not in your head. There are lots of reasons we’re feeling it more this year, and social media isn’t entirely to blame.
So we got together this week to (complain) discuss some helpful ways to take some pressure off this year, and some resources to help you manage the biggest holiday stresses: Gifts, money, family, and external pressures/expectations.
Tune in right here right now!
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Links to some topics we discuss this week
– The APA guide to managing holiday stress
– From Black Friday to Black November. What?
– The National Retail Federation survey results about tariff fears and its impact on gift prices
-The Pocket app for bookmarking gift ideas as you see them
– The wonderful “3 gift theory” from Gabby Blair of Design Mom
– Liz’s new dress (that fits!)
– A top search on our site right now: Grandmother gifts. (Maybe they’ll help you too!)
– Experience gift ideas for kids
– My Kindness Calendar for Advent, and the free printable acts of kindness Christmas countdown calendar
– Expressing gratitude as a way to keep things in perspective
– Gifts under $15 for kids and adults to help keep you on budget
– Free budget tracking apps for the holidays
– Our own best tips to help you save money on holiday gifts and Black Friday shopping
Our awesome sponsors:
FAM
We all want to raise our kids to make good media choices, and be safe and smart when it comes to screen time. So we’re really pleased that FAM or Family and Media, has a brand new website at FAMfriendly.com offering lots of excellent resources for parents including expert tips, videos, expert tips, links to helpful websites, and info about parental controls that you can get free. The smarter more families are about how we raise our kids int he digital age, the safer and savvier they’ll all be as a whole.
Visit FAMfriendly.com for tools we need to raise successful and safe kids in a digital world.
Ritual Vitamins
Ritual is the women’s multivitamin, reimagined. The obsessively-researched Women’s Essential vitamins provide 9 essential nutrients from D3 to Omega 3 in just two caplets, to help fill gaps in a woman’s diet. These are the nutrients that most of us don’t get enough of from food (we’re busy, right?) all available in a clean, absorbable form. They’re gentle on an empty stomach, plus they’re gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan-friendly, and non-GMO. No shady additives either — in fact all ingredients, as well as their sources, are listed on the Ritual site for total transparency. Best of all, they’re delivered right to your door every 30 days to make it even easier to get into good health habits. Easy!
A huge thanks to all of you who support the brands that support us!
Our Cool Picks of the Week
Liz: The “Got It Covered” album download supporting BBC Children in Need features favorite British celebs performing covers of amazing songs — but especially be sure to watch this behind-the-scenes video of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Olivia Colman covering Portishead on ukulele. Also, Downton Abbey’s Jodi Whittaker being surprised by Coldplay while…she covers Coldplay!
Kristen: These colorful, affordable leggings have pockets (available from our affiliate Amazon). Kristen is living in them, and not just for workouts — she bought the camo and is ordering more. Did we mention pockets??
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Top image: Tim Goedhart via Unsplash
