{christmas 2011 – getting organized for the holidays}

can you believe that christmas is only FORTY-FOUR days away? this year has practically flown by! i can hardly wrap my head around the fact that i have so much left to do before christmas! between buying gifts, painting christmas orders, wrapping presents, sending out cards, decorating, traveling.. it is more than enough to keep my head spinning through the new year.

it always seems that because our to-do lists double and triple the closer we get to the holidays doesn’t it? it can be very overwhelming. this year i want to take a few steps to keep my holidays simple and organized so that i can actually enjoy them and not fly by the seat of my pants through them, holding on to santa’s sleigh for dear life.

first of all, my ultimate goal is to have everything i’m about to list out done by december 4th. i know. that makes me a totally crazy person. but i think if i institute a plan and stick to it i can make it happen. the hubs and i had a family meeting on tuesday and he is on board with me for this so that will make it a lot easier!

blog & business

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i have already been working on this but i will have all of my posts scheduled out now through the end of december. i am also working to get all of my sponsors lined up for january and get all the information i need from them before december 20th. these posts will include an advent bible study, a 12 days of christmas music series, a christmas traditions linky party (scheduled for november 29th! get your posts ready to link up!), and updates along the way of how i am doing with these lofty goals.

as for the business, i am shooting to have all of my custom christmas orders complete by december 1 and all orders shipped out as necessary by december 10th.

{ps – don’t forget the last day for a custom order is dec. 1 and the last day for anything in my ready to ship section is dec 12!}

decorations

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i. love. christmas.

i love the music, the chill in the air, the warm mugs of peppermint hot chocolate, christmas movies, family time, wrapping gifts and most of all decorating. my family always made a big deal of decorating the tree together. now that my mom is gone we don’t get to do that anymore so it is very special and important to me that chris and i decorate together and enjoy it.

because we travel so much over the holidays i like to put out my decorations as early as possible. also, since we are pretty young and haven’t had a lot of time to accumulate a lot of things, it doesn’t take us too long to decorate. i am hoping that the sunday after thanksgiving will be plenty of time to get all of our christmas decorations out.

two things i am trying to figure out:

1) how to decorate around my oklahoma state decorations (because it could potentially upset the good karma surrounding my cowboys if i put them away before the national championship…) and…

2) how to convince my husband to hang christmas lights.

any help you could offer in these categories would be awesome.

gifts

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tuesday, during the family meeting, the hubby and i sat down and discussed our budget, our wishlist, and our gift ideas for family. we are going to try as hard as possible to stick to a very strict regime this year for christmas presents.

our budget per person is $35 and we are going to try to spend that all on one gift for each recipient. i know this doesn’t seem like much but we have some good reasoning behind it. most of all, it will force us to be extremely creative and make sure that whatever we purchase will be thoughtful and appreciated by the recipient.

along with this one gift per person, a few people will be getting an extra gift. my local bloggy buddy, jessica diamond, is going to take some pictures of chris and me and we are going to use them as gifts for our parents and a couple of aunts.

as for gifts for each other, where we would usually spend a little more than we spend on others, we are going to concentrate on keeping our gifts under the $75 mark.

i am going to concentrate on simple wrapping this year – probably brown craft paper and pretty string. i usually go all ornate and fancy with bows and what-not but i just want to keep things simple this year. i spent a great deal of time yesterday pinning ideas. i may actually have to buy more presents to accommodate for all the cute ideas i found!

christmas cards

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easy – remember the pictures i just mentioned? boom. done. the hardest part will be remembering to actually send them all out! in an effort to save a little green and be a little green we will be emailing out christmas cards this year.

{if you want me to email you a christmas card please email me! i’d love to share jessica’s amazing photog skills with you along with some holiday cheer!}

so that is my christmas to do list! how are you organizing your holidays this year? i’d love to hear some ideas!