The Fruits of Advance Planning: My Christmas in Pictures

Look at me! I’m a big kid at Christmas! (Dollywood)

Happy New Year! Did you have a good Christmas or, like many people on Facebook, did you insist on not beginning your Christmas preparations until after Thanksgiving, then spent the month of December moaning about the stress of cleaning, cooking, shopping, decorating, and how you didn’t have time to do everything that you wanted to do? The purpose of this blog is to encourage you to plan ahead so you can enjoy Christmas and all the season has to offer! I hope you see the value in planning a little each month. It’s worth it! (And really, how much time preparing for Thanksgiving does one need? Certainly not an entire month! You can give thanks and finalize plans for Christmas at the same time!)

I enjoyed Thanksgiving with my Illinois family, and I had a great December, even if I was late typing up my newsletter and getting the cards in the mail. Extenuating circumstances aside, suffice it to say that the month came close to meeting my expectations. I had made time to cook, decorate, volunteer for several charitable activities, attend parties, watch Christmas movies, see light displays, and even visited Dollywood for extra holiday cheer! (And in case you are wondering, I managed to do my paywork throughout the month as well!)

To demonstrate how advance planning frees up time for fun, I’m going to list my holiday activities in the order they occurred. Honestly, this was the best December yet!

1. Christmas Gift Plate Painting Party

2. Dickens of a Christmas street event

3. Angel Tree group activity: dinner and shopping (no photo)

4. Gingerbread House Decorating Party
(in my case, it was a Rice Krispie house)

5. Christmas Craft Volunteers at Children’s Event

6. Watched a Christmas parade from a chilly street corner on an otherwise sunny Sunday

7. Dressed in red for a writers group Christmas party

8. Enjoyed a Christmas Dinner Show by these performers

9. Christmas Party with Fun Photos

10. Christmas Drop-in followed by fun photos in the nearby decorated park

11. Participated in a retirement center’s Christmas program (no photo)

12. Enjoyed Christmas lights display with friends

13. Enjoyed Bethlehem Revisited (a walk-through nativity, no photo)

14. Cookie Exchange Party

15. Christmas in Dollywood! (shown in the 50s section of the park)

16. Strolled through a Festival of Trees display

17. Christmas Eve service at church with my daughter and son

18. Christmas Morning, fun photo time!

It’s me as the Elf on the Shelf!

Family Christmas Day Chili Dinner

A note about Christmas meals: in the past, I have made monkeybread for breakfast and a feast for dinner. I have spent more time in the kitchen than I liked. If you miss out on Christmas fun and relaxation with your family because you are cooking for an army, find ways to reduce your workload. You might ask everyone who is coming to dinner to bring a dish. You might switch to slow cooker meals. You might choose to start a new traditional breakfast or dinner.

For me, I discovered frozen monkeybread at the grocery store a few years ago. Two minutes in the microwave, and it’s ready to eat! I no longer make my own monkeybread. Now I have time to open stockings and watch the Disney Christmas program with the kids.

I used to try to replicate the feasts of my childhood: turkey, ham, green bean casserole, potatoes, cranberry salad, rolls, and desserts. Sometimes other things like deviled eggs or mac 'n cheese made it to the table as well. After all that work (combined with a late night gift-wrapping session), I was ready to sleep the rest of the day away! Now I wrap gifts earlier, often as soon as I have them, to avoid staying up late on Christmas Eve. And to make sure I spend as much time with my young adult kids as possible on Christmas, I gave up the feast. This year I made slow cooker Christmas chili served with shredded cheese on top. It’s a family favorite, and it’s easy. For dessert, we had cookies from the cookie exchange, plus the fudge and holly leaf candy I had made earlier. Maybe everything wasn’t perfect this season (sorry if your card arrived after Christmas!), but perfection is overrated anyway. 

So how was your Christmas? What did you enjoy, and what would you like to change for Christmas 2015? Have you shopped the clearance racks? I already have my cards for 2015 and a two-tier Christmas tray for the coming holiday’s candies!

To-Do List for July

q Shop the Independence Day clearance sales for items suitable for Christmas use: red plates (paper or plastic), napkins, tablecloths, star-shaped ornaments, star garland, candles, patriotic items that can decorate a Christmas tree, and stocking stuffers such as flag or star pencils, etc.

q Experiment with a new recipe that you may want to serve during the holiday season or to give as a gift. I found a recipe for microwaveable divinity candy a few years ago. I plan to test it to see if it is as good as my mother used to make.

q Plan your Christmas newsletter. We’ve passed the halfway mark of the year. Make note of memorable happenings so that you’re ready when it’s time to type up your newsletter to add to Christmas cards.

q Plan your Christmas photo, if you plan to include a family photo in your Christmas cards or as a gift for family members—or even as part of a calendar.

Photo Gift Tip: My daughter makes personalized calendars for her grandma, father, and me each year. She carries her camera in her purse and snaps pictures throughout the year so that she has some good shots to represent each month on the calendar; most are family shots, but some are nature scenes with quotes or verses added. The calendars become keepsake items. Plus, you can add birthdays to help scatterbrained people remember them! You can use computer software to design a calendar, but you can also upload photos to a site that has calendar templates to help you create a calendar. Any store that prints photos probably offers templates online. We’ve used Walgreens and Walmart, as well as a local printer.

This list offers you one activity per week, if you intend to do all four. All are doable, as none require a lot of time. If you choose to do less, that’s fine too. Just do something! Don’t let our favorite holiday catch you unprepared!

5 Steps to Declutter Christmas!

5 Steps to Declutter Christmas! is an excellent blog post from Action Plan Ministries and authors of the book Declutter Now! You know I’m all about advance planning, and these good folks have the right idea. Click the bold red link and get some great tips.

Don’t Procrastinate! Here’s Why...

Where was I in July? Why wasn’t I here, reminding you to shop the After-Independence-Day sales for bargains on star decorations and napkins and things that could be used for Christmas decorations? What happened to my Celebrate Christmas in July cheers, encouraging you to plan your holiday gifts, menus, and parties in advance?

My nails were painted
for a party, not a stay at
Club Hospital

I was in the hospital, escaping death. That was my surgeon’s take on it, anyway. If my daughter had not rushed me there in the “dead of night” (pun intended), I might have died. I thought I had a nasty intestinal virus, but the surgeon believes I had a hole in my colon. Fun stuff. Writhing in pain and unable to take it any more, I arrived at the ER hoping for a shot or something on the cheap and quick side, but they knocked me out and sliced me open to see what was what. Nine days later, I was released to come home and shuffle from the guest room (closest to the bathroom) to the living room and back. I truly wondered if I would ever feel normal again. I still wonder as I feel a twinge now and then and imagine the cause. For someone who has never experienced surgery or a hospital stay before, this is all new and frightening. Being told it could be 3-6 months before I’m back to normal—and a year for my insides to be completely healed—is not very comforting. Why is my body procrastinating??? Heal already!!!

I didn’t know that July 2013 would not be mine to enjoy. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. So, if you wait until after Thanksgiving to prepare for Christmas and you get hit with the unexpected, what will happen to your favorite holiday? Will you miss out on some yearly fun? Stress yourself out by trying to do too much with too little time? Face disappointed children and beat yourself up mentally?

I lost July, but that’s okay. I already have some gifts stashed away, and the one I intended to purchase in July can be bought in August (it’s just $5 — shhhh). I have new-to-us decorations stored in my holiday closet. I have my Christmas cards that will be ready to mail at the beginning of December. And of course, my good friend Beth and I already spent several months testing new appetizers to serve at our 2nd annual Christmas mystery party, so skipping appetizers in July doesn’t affect our plans.

Because I’ve made Christmas all year long a way of life, losing an Entire Month hasn’t ruined my plans. Even if, heaven forbid, I spent December in the hospital, all would not be lost. My family would still have gifts. I might have to ask a close friend to go to my house and wrap the gifts in my gift cabinet for me, but due to my advance gift purchases, I wouldn’t miss out on the joy of giving. I could direct my daughter to our craft closet, where the cards are stashed, and have her put the labels on them and mail them for me.

Please don’t leave things till the last minute. Don’t procrastinate. Before you know it, November will be here, and time will seem to speed up. If you do what you can now, at a more leisurely pace, you won’t find yourself anxious and stressed later. You will have saved yourself some time that you can spend enjoying your family and friends and the traditions of the holidays. Isn’t that the goal? To create beautiful memories that we can enjoy with our loved ones? Make sure you have the time. If you haven’t started yet, now is the time to make plans, set goals, and look forward to a warm and wonderful holiday season.

#5 - April: Your Christmas Stash and Items to Stock Up On

This month I want to focus on your Christmas “hiding place” and the things you can start filling it with. Do you have a place where you stash the gifts you make or buy throughout the year? Do you need a place to store materials for gift ideas? Without such a place, you probably hide things and then forget where you put them. One year it was two months AFTER Christmas when I found a big gift I’d gotten for my son. I’d hidden it behind a chair that sat behind my bedroom closet door that always remained open. He never looked there — but neither did I after I chose that as my hiding place!

Now I have an old, black metal, two-door supply cabinet with three shelves inside. It sits in my home office, where I spend most of my day. That’s where I stash gifts. My kids are old enough not to care what’s in there (or maybe they’ve never figured out what I keep in there besides old coloring books and boxes that once held office software), so I don’t lock it. If you have junior detectives in your house, you may want something that you can lock. Do you have a closet, cabinet, or shelf that you can use (and even disguise) as your Christmas storage? A solid color (not clear) plastic storage bin with alid is better than playing hide and seek for your gift stash. Having everything in the same place will save time later.

Now let’s turn our attention to items we can stock in our storage place. Gifts already bought or made are a given; any sewing supplies related to your gifts could be placed there, as well as any recipes that you’ve gathered for making a family cookbook. Maybe you are gathering supplies for making pretty soaps or candles. What else? This month we enjoyed the Easter holiday. What does that have to do with Christmas? Baskets are for sale now at clearance prices! If you want to make gift baskets for Christmas, stock up now. Easter grass is also on clearance and would make nifty packaging material in gift bags or boxes in place of tissue paper. You can also use the grass in clear plastic ornaments - hiding a small gift in the middle. What a pretty and unexpected surprise!

Some items may be readily available now but hard to find in the fall. Canning jars are such an item. One year I wanted to bake jar cakes as Christmas gifts, but I couldn’t find wide-mouth jars for sale anywhere in November! If you want to can homemade food items as gifts or make mix-in-a-jar gifts, now is a good time to pick up a supply of jars and stash them where you can find them. Don’t forget small jars to fill with bath salts or other homemade bath supplies as well.

Do you have a special place where you store your Christmas gifts and craft items? Share it here! This blog is set to post all comments, so feel free to comment, offer advice, or ask questions of your own.

#1 - January 2010!

From the Festival of Trees

Welcome to Christmas All Year Long—where getting ready for your favorite holiday is a year-long project!

What happens to you each December? Are you caught off guard by the many activities available? Do you participate in a mad scramble to make Christmas happen at your house—by baking and decorating and shopping and wrapping and caroling and partying and spinning in circles till you pass out? Do some of your plans turn to dust and blow away due to neglect? Then this is the place for you, my dear. We’re going to surprise everyone come December 1 by being prepared for the holiday season and having the time to enjoy it!

The idea is to focus on a holiday project each month. It won’t be time-consuming, and I’m pretty sure it will be fun. We will take one topic a month and see if we can’t make a better Christmas for ourselves, our families, and our friends.

Let’s kick off January with a two-part project. The first part is simple. Make a list of all the Christmas activities/projects you completed, and then list the things you wanted to do but ran out of time and energy for.

For example, this year I wrote a Christmas newsletter (at the last minute) and mailed out cards (at the last minute) and shopping for gifts (at the last minute). That’s not the way I like to do things, but that’s how it went. I also decorated the inside of my house, and I put up a few things outside, but I ran out of time and energy for putting out strings of lights. I made my traditional double-decker peanut butter fudge and the edible holly candy, but I ran out of time for cookies! I listened to lots of Christmas music, and I sang in my church’s Christmas choir. I went to one Christmas party thrown by the local Writers Guild at a restaurant, but I did not get to have friends over to my house as I’d hoped to do. I missed going to a live nativity, but I did take my family to the Festival of Trees for our yearly photo safari. We drove through one professional lights display, but we didn’t have time for the other, bigger one. I wanted to take my neighbors plates of Christmas goodies, but I didn’t get them made! I wanted to make some Christmas ornaments, but I haven’t had time to do that in several years, and the kits are getting quite dusty!

I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to. But I also have to work at my job, get my allergy shots, and do my regular chores and errands as a single parent, plus help my teenager daughter with her school schedule and homework.

The only way I’m going to get all those things accomplished is to create a plan and follow it. So that’s what we’re going to do together! We’ll plan and work our way through the year so that our next Christmas will be the one we’ve always dreamed of! Make your lists now.

Part two: If you haven’t yet, take advantage of the after-Christmas clearance sales. You can get fabulous bargains at this time of year. Plus, it helps you plan in advance for next Christmas. As you stand in front of the wrapping paper, you can decide on a color scheme or theme for next year if the idea pleases you. Do you want to go with all metallic paper? Papers with penguins? Stripes, plaids, polka dots? All white paper with colored ribbon to accent the packages? Buy now, and you’ll have that chore out of the way. Get Christmas cards at 50-75% off the retail price. Plastic storage boxes are on sale at this time as well, so if you don’t have a place to store and protect your Christmas supplies, you can pick something up at a discount. I’ve already got my cards for next year, as well as some ribbons and small gift boxes, and I’m watching the sales for some outdoor decorations at bargain prices.

Future topics will include party planning, Christmas newsletters and photos, choosing and testing new recipes for Christmas goodies, music for the Big Day, decorating both indoors and out, shopping and/or making gifts, family fun activities, and more. Feel free to leave a comment with ideas for future topics.

Let’s keep the Spirit of Christmas alive all year long!