oct5
October 5th 2015
Monday blues.
Didn't accomplish much.
Peeled, 1/4'd, cored and froze 48 apples.
A visit from Caroline who is home again.
A quick trip out to Shoppers.
A surprise arrival from John.
Dinner with the hubby of leftovers.
Yup,
that was my day.
It was the first day of the 12 weeks until Christmas.
Getting started TODAY:
Day 1
Now, I’m not talking about anything too fancy here. Instead, this is the type of tool you create simply, and then build upon from season to season, and from year to year to come.
The purpose of Using A Centralized Planner For Your Holiday Preparations:
We’re going to begin the Stress Free Holidays Challenge for this year, slowly doing tasks little by little over the next weeks to get us through the holidays, so we can enjoy the experience instead of being stressed out. Those of you who did this challenge last year, will know just how amazing the process is. My following of this program last year, had me resting the whole two weeks before Christmas EVE!!!!! SO YOU go dig out last year's planner. The whole point of the process is to go about your preparations in a somewhat organized fashion. Creating this planner can help. Your planner is where you can hold all your ideas, lists, schedules, calendars, recipes, and traditional activities that you and your family like to do each year. The first year, you’ll take the most effort to build it, and then the years thereafter you’ll tweak and update it, using it as a reference to help you remember what your family enjoys doing, and how you did it, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Plus, overtime it also acts much like a living, breathing, scrapbook of past holiday memories that you add to each year.
What You Need To Create Your Own Holiday Planner
You don’t need lots of fancy equipment to make your own.
Instead here’s the items you’ll need:
3 Ring binder (not the 1inch if you will be printing a lot of these pages)
Tabbed dividers (if they have pockets that is nice)
Page protectors
To Do lists
How To Make Your Holiday Planner:
Making your holiday planner is as simple or as complex as you want it to be. I tend to suggest making it simple so it actually gets done! It doesn’t have to be overly beautiful, just functional.
Basically, these next few weeks are the calm before the storm when it comes to getting ready for the holidays. Therefore, my suggestion is to just create the skeleton of your binder this week and over the course of the season you can add to it, as you do each week’s challenge. You can put together your binder with whatever categories you want, but here are some of the categories and/or sub-categories I suggest. You don’t have to create each of these—choose the ones that you enjoy or are important to you.
Potential Categories & Subcategories For The Holiday Binder:
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Day
Recipes (could have subcategory for each type if you wish)
Christmas budgeting form
Christmas wish list to give and make
Christmas card list
Holiday meal planners
(one for each meal you’re hosting or bringing a dish to)
Holiday traveling plans
Holiday party planner
Holiday traditions
Decorating
If you don’t, for example, care about travelling plans, don’t make a tab for them! The point of this planner is to make you less stressed, not guilt you into doing things you don’t want to do—so trust your gut and don’t go overboard because that will cause stress. Add any additional ideas you have for more potential categories to add to your Holiday Planner! Once you’ve gotten the structure of your Holiday Binder in place, pat yourself on the back for a job well done! Soon we’ll actually be using the Stress Free Holidays Challenge Organizer, and that’s when we’ll begin the process of planning and preparing for the holidays in a relaxed and stress-free way. Reducing holiday stress through planning is the goal of this whole 12 week series we're embarking on today. Are you ready to slowly get ready for the holidays, hopefully while having some fun along the way and time to enjoy yourself with family and friends?
Why Holiday Planning Is So Important:
Why do we feel stressed when the holidays roll around?
One of the big reasons is feeling unprepared, or having to rush around at the last minute, wrapping presents or making something. A simple way of reducing holiday stress is to plan ahead, and do the tasks at a more reasonable pace ahead of time. This series is designed to help you remember these things, so every member of the family, including you, can enjoy yourselves during the holidays.
How Each Week Of The Challenge Works:
Each week there will be a challenge and tasks for the week, which will focus on the tasks you need to accomplish to slowly get ready for the holidays. Now it's time to begin reducing holiday stress by preparing for holidays. Don't forget that you can find the original series at:
christmas.organizedhome.com
Good night from John Street.
Monday blues.
Didn't accomplish much.
Peeled, 1/4'd, cored and froze 48 apples.
A visit from Caroline who is home again.
A quick trip out to Shoppers.
A surprise arrival from John.
Dinner with the hubby of leftovers.
Yup,
that was my day.
It was the first day of the 12 weeks until Christmas.
Getting started TODAY:
Day 1
Now, I’m not talking about anything too fancy here. Instead, this is the type of tool you create simply, and then build upon from season to season, and from year to year to come.
The purpose of Using A Centralized Planner For Your Holiday Preparations:
We’re going to begin the Stress Free Holidays Challenge for this year, slowly doing tasks little by little over the next weeks to get us through the holidays, so we can enjoy the experience instead of being stressed out. Those of you who did this challenge last year, will know just how amazing the process is. My following of this program last year, had me resting the whole two weeks before Christmas EVE!!!!! SO YOU go dig out last year's planner. The whole point of the process is to go about your preparations in a somewhat organized fashion. Creating this planner can help. Your planner is where you can hold all your ideas, lists, schedules, calendars, recipes, and traditional activities that you and your family like to do each year. The first year, you’ll take the most effort to build it, and then the years thereafter you’ll tweak and update it, using it as a reference to help you remember what your family enjoys doing, and how you did it, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Plus, overtime it also acts much like a living, breathing, scrapbook of past holiday memories that you add to each year.
What You Need To Create Your Own Holiday Planner
You don’t need lots of fancy equipment to make your own.
Instead here’s the items you’ll need:
3 Ring binder (not the 1inch if you will be printing a lot of these pages)
Tabbed dividers (if they have pockets that is nice)
Page protectors
To Do lists
How To Make Your Holiday Planner:
Making your holiday planner is as simple or as complex as you want it to be. I tend to suggest making it simple so it actually gets done! It doesn’t have to be overly beautiful, just functional.
Basically, these next few weeks are the calm before the storm when it comes to getting ready for the holidays. Therefore, my suggestion is to just create the skeleton of your binder this week and over the course of the season you can add to it, as you do each week’s challenge. You can put together your binder with whatever categories you want, but here are some of the categories and/or sub-categories I suggest. You don’t have to create each of these—choose the ones that you enjoy or are important to you.
Potential Categories & Subcategories For The Holiday Binder:
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Day
Recipes (could have subcategory for each type if you wish)
Christmas budgeting form
Christmas wish list to give and make
Christmas card list
Holiday meal planners
(one for each meal you’re hosting or bringing a dish to)
Holiday traveling plans
Holiday party planner
Holiday traditions
Decorating
If you don’t, for example, care about travelling plans, don’t make a tab for them! The point of this planner is to make you less stressed, not guilt you into doing things you don’t want to do—so trust your gut and don’t go overboard because that will cause stress. Add any additional ideas you have for more potential categories to add to your Holiday Planner! Once you’ve gotten the structure of your Holiday Binder in place, pat yourself on the back for a job well done! Soon we’ll actually be using the Stress Free Holidays Challenge Organizer, and that’s when we’ll begin the process of planning and preparing for the holidays in a relaxed and stress-free way. Reducing holiday stress through planning is the goal of this whole 12 week series we're embarking on today. Are you ready to slowly get ready for the holidays, hopefully while having some fun along the way and time to enjoy yourself with family and friends?
Why Holiday Planning Is So Important:
Why do we feel stressed when the holidays roll around?
One of the big reasons is feeling unprepared, or having to rush around at the last minute, wrapping presents or making something. A simple way of reducing holiday stress is to plan ahead, and do the tasks at a more reasonable pace ahead of time. This series is designed to help you remember these things, so every member of the family, including you, can enjoy yourselves during the holidays.
How Each Week Of The Challenge Works:
Each week there will be a challenge and tasks for the week, which will focus on the tasks you need to accomplish to slowly get ready for the holidays. Now it's time to begin reducing holiday stress by preparing for holidays. Don't forget that you can find the original series at:
christmas.organizedhome.com
Good night from John Street.
Comments
Post a Comment