Small Scale Life Podcast

It has been an incredible two weeks. Julie and I moved all of our gear out of a storage locker and into this little house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am glad to be back on track with a Tuesday Gardening Show, and I think I have a good show for you today. After a couple weeks of short posts and podcasts, including the introduction of a new regular show called Midweek Motivation by the Coastal Cosmopolitan Tommy Cakes, we are gearing up for Garden Season 2018!

In this post and podcast episode, I am going to discuss How to Develop A 2018 Garden Plan: what I am going to grow and how I am going to grow it. I am making some adjustments to my planting strategy based on conversations with Michael Bell, Scott Hebert, Doneil Freeman, Drew Sample, Greg Burns and other market farmers. While I am not going to grow commercially, I am going to adopt some of their concepts and principles to make my garden very productive in 2018. That is the plan, anyway!

In case you are new to our podcast, blog and social media platforms, Small Scale Life is all about removing stress from our lives by living simply through:

We are thrilled you are here and listening to our show or reading our blog. That means a lot to us, and frankly we wouldn’t do this if you weren’t part of our Small Scale Life.

Before we begin this episode, let’s hear from some friends of Small Scale Life!

A Bee Friendly Compamy - Michael Jordan

Are you interested in bees, beekeeping, honey or mead? If you are, you need to check out A Bee Friendly Company out of Cheyenne, Wyoming! Michael Jordan, who is on The Survival Podcast Panel of experts and has been on the Small Scale Life Podcast, is an actual bee whisperer. I am constantly amazed by the work that Michael is doing to improve apiaries and communities in his backyard, at the local school and across the country. Michael is broadcasting information on Facebook Live every Wednesday at 5:00 PM Mountain (5 minutes at 5 PM), so check him out. If you are interested in bees, beekeeping, honey or mead, check out Michael Jordan’s A Bee Friendly Company on Facebook!

Nature’s Image Farm – Greg Burns

Great news, everyone! It is time to start planning for spring. Are you looking for comfrey, bees or trees? Greg Burns from Nature’s Image Farm has what you need.

Nature’s Image Farm has Comfrey Bocking 4 and Comfrey Bocking 14 cuttings available for you today.

Remember: Use code “SSL” for Small Scale Life for 10% off and free shipping, and let a real American hero Captain Lumbersquatch Greg Burns know that you heard about Natures Image Farms on Small Scale Life. Check out naturesimagefarm.com today!

Tommy Cakes – Midweek Mindset and the Small Scale Life Facebook Group

Thank you to our friends of Small Scale Life. Remember: if you have a product or a service that you would like to be discussed on Small Scale Life, contact me at realsmallscalelife at gmail dot com or use the “Contact Us” page on smallscalelife.com.

Before we begin, I want to go through some news items.

Next, I get excited when I can connect groups of people. A great example of this was connecting Michael Bell with Michael Hingston from Aussie Flame Weeders, and I think these connections are happening in our Small Scale Life Community (on the blog, Facebook, and Instagram). To help connect people through Small Scale Life, a number of us are running or starting small businesses, and it is great to connect with folks and get your name out there. To help with that, I am working on developing a business directory on smallscalelife.com. We want to connect people. We want to connect our audience to your quality businesses and products. If you want to be included in our business directory, let me know. If you want to be included, contact us at realsmallscalelife at gmail dot com or use the “Contact Us” page on smallscalelife.com.

Finally, I do have some exciting news! A company that makes the Coir product for Burpee heard my Potting Soil Challenge Podcast from last year, and they have reached out to me. This company would like to donate some Coir product for the school outreach I do each spring. I tried Coir bricks for the first time last year in the classroom, and the kids loved watching this brick of material turn into a growing medium. I really appreciate their interest, and I am really excited to work with this company and report on this in the future.

Wow…that was a lot, but it good stuff to talk about with you. Enough of all that; let’s get back to the show!

The Super Bowl is over, and we are almost to the middle of February. For gardeners, homesteaders and farmers in the northland, people are in high-gear planning and plotting for this year’s Growing Campaign. I know folks down in Texas, other southern states and our friends on the other side of the world in Australia and New Zealand are already in high gear, and I always need to keep that in mind!

Planning what vegetables and plants you grow feeds right into your overall gardening strategy and seed purchase. It is almost time to get those seeds ordered and started!

No matter where you fall in the Gardening Spectrum, we all start at the same place at the beginning of the season: The Garden Plan.

The Garden Plan is the foundation for your season’s success. It helps guide you through the seed catalogs, websites, seed kiosks and tables of live plants at the local greenhouse or big box store.

This can be overwhelming, and I have acted like a therapist talking with people who are overwhelmed by choices and options or talked with people who want to plant it all. The fact is: we can’t plant it all. We can’t grow it all. After all, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, there are 25,000 tomato varieties. Other sources say 10-15,000 varieties being actively cultivated worldwide. That is a lot of tomatoes!

We can’t grow it all, so you might be asking, where do you start?

When you start your 2018 Garden Plan, you really need to think about what you and your family will eat. It doesn’t make sense to grow a ton of tomatoes, eggplant or squash if no one in your family likes to eat them!

Focus on what you eat and grow those things. For example:

If you have trouble thinking about vegetables and herbs you use, take a notebook and keep a food log for a couple weeks. Write down the key vegetables and herbs you use on a daily basis. That can be a starting point for not only your Garden Plan but also your plan to prepare for tough times (some folks call it prepping or modern day survival).

Once you have thought about those dishes, recipes and preserved foods, you can start to write down a list of vegetables and herbs that you want to grow this year.

I am serious: write all those vegetables and herbs down on a piece of paper. We will start with a “Pie in the Sky” Garden Plan and then start to hone it down to a manageable, realistic plan.

How do you do that?

Look at your available space in your growing area. Remember: your space in the garden might be very limited. Some of these plants can get pretty large (i.e., squash, zucchini, pumpkins and tomato varieties). You will need to balance your “Pie in the Sky List” with spatial realities (i.e., you want to grow pumpkins but are limited to a north-facing condominium balcony).

I cannot emphasize this enough: do not waste your time and very valuable space for growing things that you and your family don’t like or won’t eat. Grow what you eat; otherwise, you will be making compost out of plants, herbs and vegetables that you do not eat.

If you are tight on space or want to experiment with new vegetables and herbs, I recommend buying those items at the local Farmer’s Market, buying from a local farmer or finding a local gardener or friend who will trade with you. If you like those items, maybe you will expand your garden or work those items into your plan next year.

If you have an opportunity to expand your growing area and grow more, there are a lot of options. We will discuss that in future posts and podcasts as well.

I started planning my garden in late January 2018. I sat down with my secret Small Scale Life Notebook (it has nuclear codes in it, trust me) and started roughing out my “Pie in the Sky” Garden Plan.

I decided to develop a two stage approach to my Spring Garden Plan. As you can see in the image, I am going to plant greens, green onions and sugar snap peas in the early spring (i.e., April). These plants tend to grow quickly, and I can get a harvest before the Late Spring Stage kicks off.

In the Late Spring Stage, I am going to plant the bulk of the other vegetables and herbs after the first frost date (May 10 in Zone 4B – Twin Cities). I will intercrop the Late Spring Stage Plants with the Early Spring Stage Plants. That means I will plant tomato starts next to sugar snap peas, and I will use companion guides to intercrop the peppers, onions, and greens.

The other thing you might notice is that I don’t have enough room for all of the Late Spring Stage Plants. I have two four by six foot raised garden beds, and while they can handle a lot of plants, I am going to need more capacity. It is time to show you my plans for constructing and operating wicking beds. It is time to launch Wicking Bed Nation!

Newbie or experienced gardener, we all start at the same place in the Long March of Winter. Before you get overwhelmed with the seed catalogs, websites, seed stands or plants available at the local greenhouse or big box store, do some planning! Develop that basic foundation that will set you up for success this year by following these steps:

I am curious about your 2018 Garden Plan. How do you plan your garden? Have you completed this process yet? Have you purchased your seeds yet? Put your thoughts and experiences in the comments section of this post on smallscalelife.com or join the Small Scale Life Facebook Group and share your experiences there.

In our next Gardening Podcast, I will be walking us through some seed catalogs and purchasing seed. It is time to move ahead with my 2018 Garden Plan and take it to the next level. I will also start discussing my Wicking Bed plans, so stay tuned for that.

In addition, we are lining up some more guests for the podcast. I am going to talk about Minimalism with my wife Julie, Homesteading with Greg Burns and the Urban Farming on the February Bellcast with Michael Bell. Stay tuned, I feel that we are off to a strong start to the year and really starting to get some great momentum!

Thank you again for listening to the Small Scale Life Podcast and visiting smallscalelife.com. We appreciate you and your time. Our wish for you is that you remove some of that stress in your life and live simply this week. This is Tom from Small Scale Life, and we’ll see you next time! Take care, everyone!

Midweek Motivation is a weekly episode featuring the wisdom and stories of host Tommy Cakes. This episode is focused on overcoming dread. Are you spending all your time and energy worrying about something?  Are you afraid to tackle tasks?  Perhaps you need to change your perspective and mindset, and Tommy Cakes is here to help overcome your dread. In case you are having trouble understanding the audio file, the following is a translation of the audio file from host Tommy Cakes.

Live on the Small Scale Life Podcast, it is Midweek Motivation featuring Tommy Cakes.

Hey, how are you?  I am Tommy Cakes.  Who am I?  I'm a guy from someplace, friends with some people and doing some things.  Don't worry about it!

What I can tell you is that I am in the import and export business.

I will give you a little coastal cosmopolitan insight and motivation weekly on Small Scale Life.

Introduction – Overcoming Dread

Over time, that nasty feeling in your stomach grows, and you feel exhausted or have little motivation to complete tasks and take care of business.  You procrastinate and, in some cases, that small task mushrooms into a massive problem that takes a lot of time and energy to resolve.  Have you experienced that?

Let’s tell a little story outlining this.  Our hero hurried and scrambled last summer as he packed up all his belongings and prepared to move from his house.  His lovely wife made arrangements with a local storage facility.  Our hero, his boys and a few friends loaded the belongings into the storage locker.

After a couple trips with a big truck, pickup truck, SUV and other vehicles, the house was empty and the storage locker was loaded.  Other belongings and furniture were taken to the new house, and our hero settled into his new place.

This winter, the time came when our hero had to clear out the storage locker. Our hero started to be concerned.  Who was going to help empty the storage locker and load the truck?  Where was all of this stuff going to go?  Could our hero even move that much material?

As the date came closer, our hero’s thought about it more and more.  Slowly bur surely, his concern turned into dread.  It seemed that this was too big a task to handle and too much material to move to a small house and small garage.

The day came, and our hero and his lovely wife picked up the moving truck and drove it to the locker.  They opened the locker, and after taking a deep breath, they began to load the truck.  They loaded quickly, and as they worked, the hero’s feeling of dread began to diminish.  Dread slowly turned to confidence, and confidence slowly turned to euphoria.

As they closed the door of the truck, the hero said triumphantly, “I have been dreading this day, and that wasn’t as bad as I thought.  Let’s try to get it all loaded tonight…..!”  The hero’s lovely wife reminded him that night was coming, and that the dynamic duo had extra help the next day.

So what is the point of this story?  The point of this story and your Midweek Motivation is the following:

[tweetthis]Overcome dread by focusing your mind and completing one task at a time. Start easy tasks to get momentum! #mindset #overcomingdread[/tweetthis]

[tweetthis]Stop letting your fear and imagination rule your life. #overcomingdread[/tweetthis]

You don’t have a lot of time on this earth.  Use your time wisely. Worrying and dreading about something is wasting your time and energy.  Whatever that source of dread is, it is going to be over after you engage and finish the task, and chances are, you’ll feel a lot better once it is done.  Take a deep breath, close your eyes and pull the trigger.   BOOM!

This is Tommy Cakes, and I’ll see you next week!

I would like to thank Greg Burns from Natures Image Farm and Doneil Freeman from Freeman Family Farms for the INSPIRATION to do this Midweek Motivation Podcast.  You two ARE the wind beneath my wings!

Also I would like to thank Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) for the "Kool Kats" theme music. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Badda boom, badda bing!  Dat's how we do it!

Live on the Small Scale Life Podcast, it is Midweek Motivation featuring Tommy Cakes.

Hey, how are you? I am Tommy Cakes. Who am I? I'm a guy from someplace, friends with some people and doing some things. Don't worry about it!

What I can tell you is that I am in the import and export business.

I will give you a little coastal cosmopolitan insight and motivation weekly on Small Scale Life.

Let me tell you about the very short-lived government shutdown. Did you even know it happened? Since we don’t do the political thing on Small Scale Life, I will tell you a story instead.

On Friday last week, a lone Federal employee got a phone call from his boss in a far off regional office. The boss told him that the shutdown was most likely going to happen. Since this guy was classified as a “non-essential employee,” the employee would be on furlough (unpaid leave). The boss provided instructions about what to do if the shutdown occurred and hung up.

As the employee completed his work, his mind drifted to what this shutdown meant and could do to his family’s budget. No work meant no pay. This could hurt since his paycheck went to pay a lot of the bills. If this was a long shutdown, the loss of this source of income could hurt in the long run, and the rhetoric out of Washington was not good (meaning this could be a long shutdown).

The employee started to think about what he had been doing over the past couple years and how he had not followed through on some ideas and plans. His side hustle was merely a hobby, and the work he had done to prepare for a major disaster was not enough. He and his family were not ready to outlast a major event, even after everything he had read and researched on the topic.

The employee stewed and resolved to take care of those things once the shutdown occurred. There were a lot of details to be worked out, but it just needed his undivided attention and focus. He planned his Monday, knowing that the shutdown was inevitable.

Sure enough, the politicians could not agree, and the shutdown happened. The non-essential Federal employees were on furlough, and that included the hero in our story.

Our hero was ready to act. Even though this would hurt in the short run, he would begin the process to develop that side hustle into something. As he sat down at the computer to implement his plan, the phone rang. The boss called and informed him that he was no longer non-essential, and that he had to report to work (without pay)!

Our hero, thrown for a loop, made some phone calls and got rolling with his regular work day. Later that day, the government re-opened for business for another couple weeks. He resolved to implement his plan and start preparing for the next disaster right away.

So what is the point of all of this? The point of this Midweek Motivation is this:

How do you do get prepared?

Save some money, get out of debt, store some food and water, and get healthy. Stop dreaming and researching. Start doing and executing. Prepare for the worst. Boom! If you want to learn more about HOW to prepare, stay tuned to Small Scale Life. More to come on that.

This is Tommy Cakes, and I see you next week!

In this episode, Micheal Bell returns to the Small Scale Life Podcast to discuss progress at Half Acre Farm. There have been a few changes and improvements since our interview in October 2017!  Michael and I discuss urban farming in cold weather and high winds, and we will discuss the effect on his crops and his plan moving forward.  We discuss some future projects and building soil using Regenerative Agriculture techniques discussed in a recent seminar by Gabe Brown.  We also discuss the NFL games last weekend including the Minneapolis Miracle.

As a programming note, this is the first episode of the BellCast: a monthly podcast on Small Scale Life focused on the ups and downs of urban farming on Michael’s Half Acre Farm.  Michael has been farming at this location since purchasing the land in 2016, and he sells produce locally to friends, colleagues and others.

In this podcast, Michael Bell and I discussed the following:

Minneapolis Miracle and Football Games

New Orleans Saints vs. Minnesota Vikings

Introductions

Who is Michael Bell?

Urban Farming 

Winter Conditions: Wind Storm and Cold Weather this Year

Regenerative Agriculture

Rebuilding Soil using Regenerative Agriculture Techniques - Gabe Brown

Philosophy and Continuous Learning

Time waits for no one

Farm Expansion and Logistics

Greenhouse Purchased!  How to transport?

Key topics discussed and next steps

Midweek Motivation is a new weekly episode featuring the wisdom and stories of host Tommy Cakes. This episode is focused on the big lesson learned from the Viking's Minneapolis Miracle in their game against the Saints.  In case you are having trouble understanding the audio file, the following is a translation of the audio file from host Tommy Cakes.

Live on the Small Scale Life Podcast, it's Midweek Motivation featuring Tommy Cakes. 

Hey, how are you?  I am Tommy Cakes.  Who am I?  I'm a guy from someplace, friends with some people and doing some things.  Don't worry about it!

What I can tell you is that I am in the import and export business.  

I will give you a little coastal cosmopolitan insight and motivation weekly.  

This story is about a man named Marcus.  He has been playing football all his life.  Marcus did all the drills, participated in all the practices, played in all the games and finally made it to the NFL. 

Marcus is a rookie playing in his first big game.  The game has come down to the final minutes in the fourth quarter.  Marcus' team has a slim lead, and all his team has to do to win is to stop the opponent on their final drive.  At this point it looks like Marcus' team will win the game.  Victory is in the bag!  All Marcus had to do is stop the opponent from scoring a touchdown.

With ten seconds left on the clock and third and ten, the opponent's quarterback steps up to the line of scrimmage.  He gets the ball and scans the field.  He throws the ball downfield to a receiver, who makes an incredible jump and grabs the ball.

This is Marcus' big moment.  All he has to do is tackle the receiver and the game is over.  However, Marcus puts his head down and completely misses the tackle.  The receiver sprints to the end zone, winning the game!  Marcus' team loses, and the "Minneapolis Miracle" is born.  

Marcus is Marcus Williams from the New Orleans Saints.  A rookie who put his head down and missed an easy tackle. This play inspired this post, and it inspired a whole nation of Vikings fans who are looking forward to "bringing it home." 

The point of this story and your first Midweek Motivation is this:

[tweetthis]Keep your head up; finish strong!  Keep your eyes on the target.  If you don't, you will miss every time.[/tweetthis]

Stay on target and succeed!

What a GREAT weekend!  We are really excited and are celebrating here in Minnesota.  Of course, most of the people are celebrating the Minneapolis Miracle where the Vikings vanquished the New Orleans Saints and are heading to the NFC Championships. As a life-long Packer fan, I could grumble, but I won't.  It isn't the real reason we are celebrating.  The real reason we are celebrating is that we have achieved another great milestone here at Small Scale Life.  As announced in the Small Scale Life Facebook Group this weekend, we are celebrating because we hit another 10,000 downloads of the Small Scale Life Podcast!  That is pretty exciting news, and we wanted to say thank you for hitting 20,000 downloads since starting this podcast a couple years ago.

I know some of you are new to our podcast, blog and social media platforms.  In case you are new, Small Scale Life is all about living simply by focusing on:

That is pretty general, and we typically focus on:

We are thrilled you are here and listening to our show or reading our blog.  That means a lot to us, and frankly we wouldn’t do this if you weren’t part of our Small Scale Life. Thank you!

I really didn’t know what to expect when blog in November 2015 and I started this podcast in January 2016, and I am truly grateful and blessed that you are spending your time with my guests and me on the podcast, on the blog, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Gab and YouTube.

This has been a learning process.  We are, in fact, learning, doing and growing in real time, before your eyes.  What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at the numbers from Wordpress for Small Scale Life and compare 2016 to 2017:

2016

6,590 views

2017

10,922 views

By listening and engaging with us each week, you are pushing me to improve my processes and the quality of the blog, podcast and social media platforms.  This is not an easy job, so I am calling in some support to help in this effort.  I will provide more detail about that in the next post!

Thank you again for your time and your attention in previous years. I am looking forward to 2018!  We are going to focus on developing our urban homesteads and farms, small businesses, tribes, and healthy lifestyles.  At the same time, we will continue to seek and find adventures, where ever they take us.  We should have a lot of fun together and hopefully bring some great content to you.

My call to action for this post and podcast is to connect with us.  Become part of the Small Scale Life story.  Engage with us and share you comments with us.  Ask questions and let us know you are out there.  If you are inspired to try gardening, urban farming, getting healthy or taking the road less traveled, let us know!

I am but a humble pirate. The wind is blowing at our backs, and the tide is rising.  There are empires to plunder and rum to drink.  Hoist the sails; man the mizzen mast!

Bring me that horizon, yo ho!

Welcome to 2018, everyone!  Back in 2016, one of my first interviews was with a guy who was kicking off his small market farming operation in Chilliwak, British Columbia. That guy is Scott Hebert, and his farm is called Flavourful Farms.  Since that interview, Scott has been working hard on his farm, landing new clients, and starting a new podcast and Vlog!   He is a busy guy.  I am thrilled to Scott back on Small Scale Life to kick off the new year.  In this podcast, we discuss a number of topics including farming, stoicism, his podcast Stoic Mettle, launching his Vlog, developing a tribe and growing and maintaining his beard.  I had a lot of fun on this episode, even with a minor technical glitch and some background noise (on my end) that will be addressed in future shows.

One cool thing that happened during this interview was that Scott announced starting a weekly Vlog on his YouTube Channel. 

Scott Hebert and I discussed the following topics in this interview:

Happy birthday, Small Scale Life! Happy birthday to me! We made it one more time around the sun, and January 2nd was our collective birthday. Small Scale Life is two years old, and I am just a little older than that (really). The purpose of this post is to thank you all for all the love and kind word's yesterday on my and Small Scale Life's birthdays.

Please note: I originally posted a much longer post about where this platform is going in 2018, but I am re-writing this post to thank you all for all the well-wishes I received yesterday. The longer article will be published in a separate post.

Just in case you are new to Small Scale Life, we are living simply by growing, exploring and living healthy. To put it simply, we are focused on:

• Gardening,

On my and Small Scale Life’s birthday, I wanted to thank everyone for being a part of our story and being a part of our Small Scale Life. I had so many good conversations and well wishes on my birthday! It was a little overwhelming, and I really am thankful for your comments. I am totally serious: if I could throw a big party and invite you all, I would! Maybe I'll have to think about organizing something like that....

All in all, I had a very busy year at Small Scale Life and in my personal life, but through it all, I think I have gotten a little wiser and a little better at this blogging and podcasting stuff this year. I know there is a lot to learn and I am constantly improving, and I appreciate new friends who have helped me over the past year.

I really want to thank all the people who were guests on the Small Scale Life Podcast this year including Greg Burns, Jay Dolan, Travis Swanson, Todd Ehrhardt, Micheal Jordan, Michael Bell, and Doneil Freeman. What a great group of people! I really do appreciate the support and your time. If you haven't listened to those shows, you are missing out. Go to the Podcast tab and start listening today (or just click the text)!

We will use the lessons learned this year to improve Small Scale Life, the podcast, our urban homestead and ourselves this year. We have some ambitious goals in 2018. I am working hard to put a team into place that will allow us to grow and improve this platform. We will have regular guests and a more regular schedule for posts and content. More on all that in upcoming posts and podcasts, and the proof will be the quality of our work. The bottom line is that I think we are going to have a great year!

Stay tuned and continue to live simply, grow, explore and be healthy with us in 2018!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you are spending lots of quality time with your family and friends this season. We certainly will be doing just that over the next week! In this post and podcast, I wanted to establish a tradition here on Small Scale Life by rebroadcasting my reading of the poem “Twas the Night before Christmas.” My dad used to read it to my family when we were young, so in that fine tradition, I am posting it for you and your family to enjoy.

Reading this poem brought so many memories back from when I was young. This time of year was always a lot of fun for us: we would go sledding, make snow forts, have snowball fights, cross country ski and spend all day out in the snow. We would come home wet and cold, and warm up in the living room near the wood burning stove while drinking hot chocolate. Our wet boots, hats, gloves, and snow suits hanging in the basement laundry room (or wadded up in a ball near the laundry room - our boys come by it naturally).

Nothing says the holidays more than some of the classic songs from bygone eras. I have added three of my favorite songs to the end of the podcast. These songs are "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Frank Sinatra and "The Christmas Song" by Nat King Cole. In this age of techno-modified singers, it is excellent to listen to these songs from the Golden Age of our country: when times and living were a little more simple.

In this day and age when we are so caught up with shopping, presents, dinners, parties and technology like our phones and social media, it is important to take a little time to stop and enjoy the people around us and the moments we share with them. That is my hope for you this season.

During this episode of the Small Scale Life Podcast, I discuss the following topics and play the following songs:

From my family to you, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Always continue to strive to live simply: grow, explore and be healthy! May your 2018 surpass your expectations!

This time of year, we gather and celebrate the holidays with family and friends. For members of our family, this is a particularly meaningful Christmas: this is the first Christmas without Barb Taylor and without Mary Cicero. Two great ladies that made our world a brighter and better place. While these wonderful women left us too soon, we continue to practice Holiday and Christmas Traditions that bring family and friends together. We will build on these Christmas Traditions in the future as we celebrate each other, our lives, our history and our heritage. In this post, I will discuss Five Christmas Traditions that we practice, and if you don't have your own Christmas Traditions, maybe that will inspire you to give some of them a try!

Just to be completely honest with you, I am late with this post. I originally wanted to post it earlier this week. Given the mix of emotions this year, I found that this was a particularly difficult post for me to write. I struggled with how to frame and write it as I have been working on it all week. I want to thank my sister-in-law Kelly Domres for helping me "get over the hump" on this post. As she said eloquently, "Do not dwell on the negative; you have a lot to be thankful for this year." She is absolutely correct. This post is dedicated to my sister-in-law, Kelly.

We moved from our house in St. Louis Park in July, and most of our stuff is still in a storage locker. This is by design because we moved into a furnished house, and we were planning to move our gear when we finally purchased our house. The drawback to this strategy, however, is that all of our holiday decorations (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter) is buried deep in the storage locker somewhere.

Fortunately for us, Julie's parents had an artificial tree, lights and ornaments stored in the basement of this house. Christmas was Julie's mom Barb's favorite holiday, and she always tried to make it special for the family. Using her tree, lights and decorations is comforting and special for all of us. Julie and I set up the tree and the lights, and then we all took turns adding ornaments to the tree. There are some special ornaments from the past, some that are funny and some from relatives long since passed. Inspired, I even decorated the outside of the house with lights and ornaments.

Barb might not be with us in body this year, but her spirit and her memory lives on for all of us. Her decorations, lights and trees remind us of what a great and generous woman she was.

https://youtu.be/4fyS5CLBgyM

I have really made a conscious effort to NOT watch much television and movies in 2017. Sure, I watched Taboo (and even did some podcasts about the show Taboo earlier this year), Game of Thrones and The Punisher, but overall, I have done a pretty good job limiting my time in front of a television or movie screen.

This time of year, however, I make an exception. With Ryan home from college, we gathered together as a family to watch some classic Christmas and Holiday movies. There have been some great ones over the years, and the following movies are our family favorites:

• Planes, Trains and Automobiles (I seriously know almost every line of this movie)

We have watched two of the four movies so far this season, and we will have to find the time to watch the last two. It is easy to forget how funny these movies actually are, so if you need a break and want a good belly laugh this time of year, check out these classics. You won't even shoot your eye out, kid!

For the past few years, we have gone to Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. This year, Julie, Danny, Ryan, David and Jenny (brother and sister-in-law) went to Wooddale's Christmas Program. The church is massive, and they had a full orchestra, choir, organ and even interpretive dancers. The program consisted of the following songs:

• Overture "Canticle of Glorias"

It was very profession and extremely inspirational. Some of the songs had a Celtic feel to them, and the grand finale included a Scottish man playing bagpipes in traditional dress. It was amazing to hear, especially since it was my dad's and Barb's favorite hymn.

If you have a chance to go to a church program, you should. It is a chance to decompress, tune out the commercialism of the season, sing carols and hymns, and share in the Christmas message with family and friends.

When Julie and I were in high school, we would decorate sugar cookies with Julie's family, her cousin, her aunt and her uncle every year. It was a lot of fun (and it tasted good too)!

This year, we gathered once again to decorate Christmas cookies. It was a team effort: we made dinner, Julie's dad and fiance Sue made the sugar cookies, and Julie made the frosting. We had a great dinner, and then we got down to business decorating the cookies. It was a lot of fun, and we had a bunch of laughs as some of our "artists" got creative with gingerbread men and Santa cookies. In fact, you can see one of those cookies in the picture above (just don't point it out to your kids).

I am sure eating tons of cookies covered in the world's best frosting didn't help my healthy lifestyle goals, but it was worth it! We'll have to do it again next year!

My ancestors on my mother;s side came from Poland and Czechoslovakia. This year, I did a little research about Polish Christmas traditions. In Polish households, Christmas Eve is an extremely important day. The Polish people celebrate Christmas by preparing a big meal called "Wigilia." This traditional meal is a big deal. According to the Polish Women's Alliance of America, the wigilia consists "of twelve meatless dishes, and includes many kinds of fish, beet or mushroom soup, various dishes made from cabbage, mushrooms, or potatoes, pierogi, followed by dried fruit compote and pastries for dessert." The meal does not start until the first star is seen in the sky.

Like Polish homes, we traditionally have a big meal on Christmas Eve. Unlike the Polish dinner, we eat meat (and lots of it). We have adopted something my side of the family started doing years ago: fondue. We will cook shrimp, beef, and vegetables in boiling oil or broth (we have tried both). We will make a cheese fondue and dip bread into it (big hit around Green Bay Packer fans), and we will have a dessert fondue with chocolate, marsh mellows, strawberries and pound cake.

The beauty of the Christmas Eve fondue is the social aspect of the meal. It takes time to cook the food, and it is a lot of fun to talk with everyone, joke around a bit, and yes, steal someone else's meat or shrimp (accidentally, of course)! It takes some time to prep: cutting the meat, breads, pound cake and vegetables; preparing the various fondue pots; and gathering the various dipping sauces for the cooked food.

A few words of caution before you do fondue:

This year, we are planning on a smaller meal on Christmas Eve, but we will eat very well. We will celebrate Christmas Eve dinner with Julie, Danny, Ryan and me, and we are eating steak, shrimp, twice baked potatoes and salad. It will be a great dinner!

What are your Christmas Traditions? What do you do with your friends and family? I would love to know, and maybe we will incorporate some of your traditions into our Christmas and Holiday Celebrations. Feel free to share your Christmas Traditions as a comment on this blog post.