Exclusive: Dwyane Wade Takes Holiday Decorating Into His Own Hands—And His Pinterest Board Proves It

While many celebrities outsource the work of bringing Pinterest boards to capture inspiration for how the Wade household, including wife Gabrielle Union-Wade, will celebrate. A Holiday Entertaining.” On it is a mix of cool pins: candle holders that make fantastic centerpieces, menu concepts (smothered turkey thighs and lemon pound cake? Yes, please!), lighting concepts, karaoke song lists, table settings, >my chefs, my musicians, and my house manager, and make sure all things house-wise are taken care of. I meet with everybody leading up to it. And so, for me, who has a tattoo of it, one of the most important things to me is understanding the value of moments that turn into memories. And I think we do a very good job of that: building these moments that are going to turn into lifelong memories when you get together and you’re like, man, you remember that? And those are the kind of things that I feel like life is. Life is just a collage of memories from many moments. So that’s what we try to create. And I think I do a good job of it, and my family does, too.

Thanksgiving is going to be a little bit different for you guys this year because of Gabrielle traveling. So I’m assuming Christmas will probably be where you’ll get to really show your talents. And so in regards to Christmas, when it comes to gifting, I wanted to know how do you find the right gift for the most important people in your life? I feel like the better you do in life, the more grandiose you can be in your gifting. But how do you become more creative each year? What is the key to doing that and how does Pinterest help?

I used to be the person who tried to give everybody gifts and try to think for everybody. And then my life got busy, and I started being a terrible gift-giver. I was pulled to the side, and I was told I was a terrible gift-giver.

What were you doing!? Were you giving out gift cards?

I wasn’t focused on it. I was asking other people what was hot. And I was giving people gifts that they did not really need. Then I went to gift cards for everybody, and then I went to gift cards for everybody, but the main people who really allow my world to work. And so I think for me, the biggest thing about being able to utilize a tool like Pinterest, and I’m someone who has notebooks and notepads all around me. I’m always writing down an idea that I have, but sometimes those ideas are just scattered brain. So it allows my scattered brain to just be organized, and then it introduces me to other things that I didn’t know that I really wanted, right? And so I think Pinterest has allowed me to be a little bit more creative in gift-giving for the people I buy gifts for, and that’s all people want. They want effort. So it’s raised my level of effort because I have this other tool that helps me think a little further than I probably would, because sometimes you just want to be lazy and be like, “Hey, come get this gift card.” It’s turned me up a little bit.

I love that. And speaking of gifting, what’s the best gift that you can recall that you’ve received?

My answer is going to be so boring. You know the greatest gift in life is time. And so for me to be able to create these times and these moments with my family, it means everything. I’ve been on record about my childhood and how I grew up and what I did not have and the things I did not receive. And that’s not just material things. These are physical things when it comes to my mom being in prison and all the things that I’ve been through. So now in my life, literally the greatest gift that I can always get or that I can give is literally time. And I really spent a lot of my life doing that, giving my time, but also showing up. And I love the moments where other people can give me their time. That’s it. I don’t need anything from anyone from that standpoint. I work very hard. So all the things I want, I’m lucky enough to be able to purchase and get, but I can’t buy time. And so I know that’s so cliché in a sense, but really, when you live life and you experience things, you realize most things don’t matter. What’s important is time.

I was even going to say, I know you shared that you had Dwyane Wade holiday pinterest

The post Exclusive: Dwyane Wade Takes Holiday Decorating Into His Own Hands—And His Pinterest Board Proves It appeared first on Essence.