Category: Simple Home

This week’s Twelve Weeks of a Simple Christmas mission revolves entirely around cards. If you don’t do cards, you’re finished. Congratulations!

This is short and sweet…for once.

If you haven’t yet, take your family photo. Consider taking it while everyone is together over Thanksgiving weekend and can peek at digitals to decide on a favorite.

Regarding cards, there should be some incredible online sales over the next couple of days, so keep your eyes open.

That’s that. Say cheese and get moving!

(Since this week’s mission was so quick, what do you say to whipping up a batch of Christmas cookie dough and popping it in the freezer? I say that’s just brilliant. Cookies…brilliant.)

Accountability Time

Let’s talk turkey…or stockings. I am still perfecting my gift list, haven’t bought wrapping paper, and didn’t do anything with my decorations. That said, my decorations were put back very wisely last time, and I only have a tiny bit, since we only have a tiny trailer.

You?

By now the stores are bursting with Christmasy goodness. While this might offend your not-until-after-Thanksgiving sensibilities, it does assist with this week’s mission. Week 6 of Twelve Weeks of a Simple Christmas is all about decorating–that doesn’t mean you have to decorate this week. Heaven knows my husband would keel over dead if I decorated before Thanksgiving weekend. He is barely surviving the Christmas music my kids turn on every time they think he’s out of the trailer or asleep. My man. Grin.

Back to topic–this week’s mission is decorating according to your family’s traditions. If you (like us) are a Thanksgiving weekend decorator, that’s great! If you decorate now, fab! If you decorate on Christmas Eve, that’s fine, too, if it suits your family. Your decorating day(s) should already be on your Christmas calendar.

What you’re really doing this week is getting your decorations ready so the process is simple and fun.

Ideally, you wrote down or took care of any issues after last year’s Christmas, but just in case you didn’t…wink:

A Quick Christmas Decor Checklist:

• Where and when are you cutting your tree? Give a quick call for hours of operation or go out to your back 40 and mark your favorite tree now before it gets coooooolder.
• Is your fake tree good or needing replacement? Replace before decorating day.
• Do your tree lights work? Replace if they’re deader than Jacob Marley.
• How are your outdoor decorations? Do you even want to do outdoor decorations? If you are expanding the collection every year to go for a National Lampoon’s look, add to your stock. (Personally, I’m a red ribbon and cedar bough girl, myself.)
• Do you hang edible decorations on an outdoor tree for all God’s critters? If so, have the supplies on hand (and enough to continue throughout the winter so the critters don’t start depending on the food and then have nothing).
• Are your nativity sets in need of repair?
• Do you string popcorn and cranberries? If so, buy them…and string…and a needle if you don’t have one. Do you hang cookies on the tree? Buy the ingredients. Do you need tinsel? Stock up.
• Do you add an ornament or another collector’s item every year? Get going on this.
• While you’re at it, stock up on cocoa and mallows or apple cider and cinnamon sticks to make your decorating day extra fun.
• Are your surfaces decluttered and clean so you can decorate instead of stash and dash on decorating day? Please gradually declutter as you prepare for Christmas so you can enjoy the holiday instead of stash stuff–ugh, stuff.
• While you wait to decorate for Christmas, get your autumnal or Thanksgiving decorations out, particularly if you are hosting the meal.

When the day comes, decorate! It will be simple and fun since you’re so ultra-prepared.

I know some Christians have an issue with decorating. The Young family’s Christ-Centered Christmas talks about how decorating can be Christ-pleasing.

Accountability Time

Lasts week’s wrapping supplies mission was…well…let’s just say I shopped for wrapping paper, choked on a lung at the price, and didn’t buy it. “Well begun is half done,” says good ol’ Mary Poppins. (By the way, that book is nothing like the movie. Just thought you ought to know.) I don’t really think that’s well begun at all, do you? Boo, me. I did stock up on tape, however. That deserves an extra marshmallow in my cocoa.

For all the Christmas missions so far, click here. For more help in simplifying your holidays, read my book.

How are you doing on your Christmas missions?

This mission might feel a bit too early, but Week 12 You will appreciate that Week 5 You did this. Two weeks ago on Twelve Weeks of a Simple Christmas you focused on planning your gift list. You may have even started (or finished) shopping. This week we’re going to prepare to wrap or even begin wrapping those gifts as well as get non-family gifts “all wrapped up” (cheesy pun totally intended as always).

First, my drama:

We always wrap presents on Christmas Eve after the kids go to bed. It’s our old married couple tradition. It. takes. forever! If it weren’t for dippin’ into Santa’s cookies, I seriously think I would die! My husband wouldn’t die, because he falls alseep on the couch a third of the way into it.

I have long wanted to change this torturous tradition, but my husband says, “It’s tradition! Snore.” It’s also a tradition for me to be exhausted on Christmas morning and unable to fully enjoy the moment, because I’m running on four hours of sleep and I ain’t a college girl anymore. So a couple years back, I adjusted the tradition. My husband still wraps my presents on Christmas Eve and falls asleep on the couch, and I still dip into Santa’s cookies (sorry, good fella), but my share (and most of his third) of the wrapping gets done ahead of time. Otherwise…it takes forever and I almost die and Santa doesn’t get his cookies.

So…this week’s mission.

Here’s how to streamline the wrapping process so it doesn’t take forever or take over your home:

1. Gather all your wrapping supplies from previous years.
2. Add anything you still need to your shopping list–tape, ribbon, gift tags, tiny candy canes, whatevs–and pick them up next time you’re in the store.
3. Set up a wrapping station–find an unused table or counter, the top of the dryer, a guest bed, an ironing board, whatever you have. You can even stick everything in a low box and slide it under your bed to pull out when you have something to wrap.
4. When a present comes in, write down what it is and wrap it. Then hide it. Hide it good.
5. If you’re baking gifts this year, like cookies for The Simple Homemaker, get your packages ready. Check out some fun upcycle packaging ideas like these (but keep it simple) or these. Upcycle–I always think of a unicycle rider flipped upside down.

Obviously, this is an ongoing project as gifts come into the home. To get you started, here is this week’s two-part mission:

1. Complete steps one and two–totally set up your wrapping station or box. If you wrap the box, that makes it more fun.

2. Try to finalize and purchase non-family gifts this week–pastor, teachers, office gifts, mailman postal employees, white elephant gifts, party gifts, school exchanges, neighbor gifts, etc.

Might I recommend a few Stephen Bautista CDs? (That’s my hubby and his music is amazing–not being biased here, since I’m his worst critic.) They make excellent gifts and terrific outreach tools. If you get one for everyone on your non-family list, and they arrive next week, and you wrap them all right away, BAM, you’re finished, and that is totally awesome.

Accountability Time

I’m still working on my gift list, and I’m still trying to extract details from other people about where they’ll be for the holidays. Waiting, waiting, waiting…

The budget hasn’t reproduced like rabbits, so I’m proceeding with extreme caution in that area. My husband told the kids that they could have a puppy for Christmas if they didn’t get any other gifts from us apart from stockings. That would make my life easier…and then harder.

I need to read my book again for gift ideas.

We are a third of the way through our Twelve Weeks of a Simple Christmas missions, which means Christmas is that much closer! Are you keeping up? No? That’s okay. Don’t get overwhelmed. Just do what you can. Every little bit you do now makes you less frazzled down the road.

Today is one of my favorite missions–planning the food.  I like food. I like planning food. I don’t, however, like shopping. Enough about me.

Here’s how to plan your holiday food:

1. Get out your calendar; get out your budget sheet; get out your gift list; get out two pieces of paper and a pencil…or whatever high-tech device you techies use for planning.

2. Assess which upcoming events you need food for…for which you need food. That includes Tricks-or-Treats if you feed little angels and pumpkins at your door, Thanksgiving if you’re hosting or bringing a dish, Christmas parties you’re attending or hosting, the big holiday itself, and New Year’s. I have the bonus of three holiday birthdays in there.

3. Determine how many people will be attending events you’re hosting, whether you’re handling the entire feast or calling it a potluck, if you have overnight guests to feed, and what you are asked to bring to other people’s events. This will require some emails and phone calls.

4. Check your gift list for food gifts; don’t forget stockings!

5. Are you making cookies this year? List them and gather the recipes. Mmmmm…cookies…

6. Make a menu. Skip nothing. It’s awful to have a houseful of food at Christmas and find you have nothing to eat while waiting hours for the holiday meal–add some emergency PBJs or something to the plan.

7. Print or pin or otherwise save your recipes. I like to use a binder and keep my lists, menus, and recipes in there from year to year–it’s fun to look back, and it helps with planning.

8. Write out a shopping list for groceries–again, include everything.

9. Because you’ve started early, you have plenty of time to begin gathering non-perishables or freezable items as they go on sale. If you snag a few items a week, you won’t sabotage your budget. Keep the ingredients somewhere super secret, or put post-it notes on them threatening no gifts for anyone who eats your chocolate chips and French’s onions. That usually works…usually.

10. Again, record everything (easily done by crossing it off the list). You don’t want to end up with 12 bottles of vanilla and no flour…although vanilla does make a nice gift.

That’s it. Ten steps just to say write down your eats and go buy ’em.

Accountability Time

How are you doing on the missions so far? Did you plan out the rest of the year? Did you write a budget? Have you polished your gift list?

A little bit about me–I start strong and finish weak. I need this book: Finish, by John Acuff (affiliate link). Actually, I have that book, but I haven’t finished it. I don’t like irony.

Regarding last week’s mission, I have gathered Christmas lists, tossed around gift ideas, and written down what I already have on hand, but I have not solidified anything. I did discuss gifts with my husband, and all I got out of him is that we’re not getting a puppy, which is important information. I have a few loose ends to tie on previous missions also, and I’m doing that all as much as possible this week.

Care to hold me accountable? You can always email me or join me on Facebook (as The Simple Homemaker), Twitter (as The Simple Home), or Instagram (as The Travel Bags)…or you can join me as I procrastinate on Pinterest! (I did not just say that.)