How to Plan for an Awesome Christmas

It’s that time of year! A common November goal, and one of mine, is to plan for a peaceful and lower-stress holiday season.

This is the big week, and we kicked it off with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a fantastic, but low-key family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. We did something totally new and had 90% of the meal catered from Whole Foods, which we never thought we’d do.

This has been a crazier-than-normal year for both us and my in-laws, and it ended up being the best way to do it. I highly recommend it! The price was perfectly reasonable for the amount of food and quality we good (aka, the food tasted great and we had a ton of leftovers!)

We also aren’t doing any shopping for Black Friday (Actually, I take that back. I am not doing any Black Friday shopping. My husband is doing some online shopping for our new house.)

We’ve got our 2015 Christmas Bucket List done (keep reading, if you’re curious), know roughly where we’re going to be for each holiday, have thoughts on simple gifts, and have already decorated our gingerbread house!

So, how does one plan for an awesome Christmas?

1. Pick a Planning Resource

A few of my favorites:

• The Life Your Way Christmas Planner. Get the entire planner here, or download page by page for free here.
• A Simpler Season from Life as Mom.
• An Evernote template (of course!)
• Pen and paper

2. Brainstorm activities & traditions to do at home

What have you done in past years that was special? What haven’t you tried that you would like to try?

I have fond memories of always doing an advent countdown, but haven’t done the best job of that in past years with my own kids (although, to be fair, they still are fairly young). Here are a few I’m considering for try this year:

• Truth in the Tinsel
• Jesus Storybook Bible Advent reading
• Trader Joe’s Advent Countdown (This is $.99 and has a small chocolate for each day!)

(psst..a few of those links above are affiliate links)

3. Brainstorm activities & traditions to do away from home.

If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, check out the Pacific Northwest Christmas Family Fun Guide and the PDX Kids Calendar Holiday Events Guide.

If you’re not in the Portland area, google “holiday events guide” or “Christmas events” in your area.

4. Make your list – with “must do’s” and “hope to’s”

My general philosophy on the Christmas season is to make a list of all the things we hope to accomplish, as well as the essentials that we’ll feel like we missed out of we didn’t accomplish.

By including the “hope to’s” on the calendar, we know when we have opportunities if we feel like it. We also don’t pressure ourselves to do everything and end up stressed out. So why include them at all, you ask?

I didn’t for a few years, to keep things simple. But then we found that there were some date-specific things we missed out on because we didn’t realize when they were. So, the “hope-to’s” stay on the list to give us visibility to dates so we don’t miss out.