If you’re just joining us, we’re kicking off a series called An Organized Christmas. The purpose is to plan and prepare now so that we can all kick back, relax, and enjoy the holiday season with our friends and family.
Last week I introduced the idea of An Organized Christmas to you and mentioned that my first goal was to make a Christmas want-to-do list. This isn’t the wrap gifts, bake cookies kind of list. I’m talking about those things that we want to do but won’t get to do if we don’t think about them ahead of time.
This week my family spent a little time thinking about what kinds of activities we would like to do during the 2011 Christmas season. It was kind of fun to dream of snowy days and twinkling lights while it was still comfortably warm outside! Here’s the list that we came up with.
- Schedule a playdate with a friend over Christmas vacation from school.
- Drive through the Festival of Lights at Oglebay Park.
- See the Nutcracker Ballet (Emma is taking ballet this year, and she will LOVE this!).
- Decorate our tree earlier than usual so we can enjoy it longer.
- Make baked goods for our neighbors (homemade bread maybe?).
- Do a Jesse Tree for the month of December. (Details and printables coming your way soon.)
- Participate in two Christmas programs, one at church and one with our homeschool group.
- Make a crafty gift that Emma can give to her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts & uncles.
- Read Christmas books.
- Sing Christmas songs.
- Make a several handmade Christmas gifts.
Now that we know what we’d like to do, we can plan ahead (while the calendar is still somewhat empty for December) to make sure that these activities happen. We can research the cost of tickets for the paid events, and we can even buy those tickets now. This will cause less stress on the budget because we’ve planned ahead.
I’m thrilled that we took the time to have this conversation. When I started investigating the Nutcracker Ballet tickets, I realized we had some major schedule conflicts that would be impossible to overcome as we get closer to the date of the performance. But because we’re planning now, we can work around them.
I’ve already started buying baking supplies for our holiday baking, so I’ve got a good start on keeping costs and stress levels down on that one. I need to decide what kinds of baked goods we’re going to make, but that’s a post for later.
So did you make your list? Are you planning to do anything exciting this Christmas that you can start planning now?
This post is linked to:
:: Works for Me Wednesday hosted by We Are THAT Family
:: Thrifty Thursday hosted by Coupon Teacher
:: Frugal Friday hosted by Life As Mom
:: Finer Things Friday hosted by The Finer Things in Life
One thing that I *love* doing is to drive around and look at all the Christmas lights. I need to make sure to get that on the list!
We took some time last year to drive around town to enjoy them. I may add that back into the mix for this year too.
Like you, I try to think ahead about what things we would like to do at Christmastime. But instead of planning and putting things in my personal calendar, we make a Christmas chain, where one link is removed right before or right after dinner each night during Advent. The link has an activity on it that we are supposed to do that evening. My kids think that the activities that show up on each link is totally random, but really, I have completely planned it out! (Well, the older kids have caught on to my trick, but the little kids still think it is random!) Weeknight activities are usually less complicated things that might include: using our “Christmas dishes” for dinner, reading a Christmas story at bedtime, or coloring a Christmas picture. Weekend activities are more ambitious: make homemade gifts, write out Christmas cards for friends and get them ready to mail, or decorate the tree (this is usually the first link that we take off the chain!).
Along with being a fun way to count down to Christmas, the chain helps keep me on track with prioritizing my family first during this hectic time of year. Without the chain, if I were exceptionally tired or maybe grumpy one evening, I would probably skip doing something with the kids. But…they look forward to it, and once we take down the link and I read what the evening’s activity is, it doesn’t seem like such an impossible thing to do to set aside a few minutes for that particular activity, instead of having to come up with an activity off the top of my head.
Oh my word! Lynn, this is FANTASTIC! I love that you have everything planned out and that it’s motivating you to actually DO what you wanted to get done. Somehow involving the kiddos does that, doesn’t it? What a fun way to get your to-do list done and enjoy the season together. Thanks for sharing that. I have a feeling a chain like that may show up at our house this year. 🙂
Have you seen the “bucket” lists around blogland. There are a ton on the site pinterest. I make one for each season/holiday now! Or it really does just pass you by…
I hadn’t thought of a bucket list for Christmas. Great idea!!