#1 Celebrate – If you are celebrating Christmas, best wishes for you and your family for a very happy, joyful time in your celebrations. Enjoy.
If you are not celebrating Christmas, I wish you a peaceful and restful time during this holiday season.
Cheers
Archive for 25 Things to Do Before Christmas
#2 Last Minute Wrapping – Last day to shop. But you finished ages ago right? So you have a few small things to finish wrapping while you enjoy watching A Christmas Carol, White Christmas or Miracle on 34th Street for the “umpteenth” time. Remember to buy milk to get you over the holidays.
#6 Volunteer at a Food Bank – For many people this is a season of giving and yet many more have little to give. If you have often wanted to volunteer at your local food bank, consider giving them a call and slotting in over the holidays.
# 5 Decorate a Gingerbread House with your children – No children? Why not buy a kit and invite your nieces/nephews or the neighbours to come and help you decorate it.
Welcome to the Winter Solstice. Happy First Day of Winter. Now the days in the northern hemisphere get longer – yeah! Sorry to the folks down under who will now start to get less daylight each day.
To our friends honouring their Jewish faith, Happy Hanukkuh.
# 7 Prepare to Write Thank You Notes – The writing of thank you notes for the receipt of gifts, dinners, visits and good gestures is perhaps a dying art. Not only do many of us exist online with communication almost solely through cyberspace, but many of the manners of the previous generation are being lost as quickly as our computer chips speed up and our computer memory expands.
Why not revive this tradition. A handwritten note is a welcome and friendly addition to the usual collection of post holiday bills. To make sure writing thank you notes doesn’t become just another stress, book the time into your calendar. Save the space in your schedule. Keep a short list of gifts or events for which you would like to write a thank you and check your note card supply. Last but not least, remember to keep your contact/address list handy.
…Because not everyone celebrates Christmas. Many thanks to Lisa Brisbois from The Wisdom Practice who helped me out with today’s post.
If you are celebrating Hanukkah you may have already used some of the planning tips in our countdown to December 25. Your countdown is ending sooner though as Hanukkah starts this year December 21 at sunset and lasts 8 days to December 29 at sunset. Lisa offered these tips to get organized.
- Send Hannukah cards to family and friends.
- Decide who’s doing the family Hanukkah party this year. How many people are coming?
- Buy the fixings to make latkes for the party.
- Check your box of December decorations if you have one: is the dreidl set for the kids to play with still there? Do you need to get a new one?
- Dig out the Mennorah and check your Candle supply for it.
- Buy Hannukah gelt to give away or enjoy for yourself!
- Find your family’s copy of the story of Hannukah so you can read it to your kids and remind them of the Maccabees and the miracle of light.
- Buy eight small appropriate gifts for your kids, one for each day of Hanukkah.
#13 Candles for the Season – If you use candles in your home, in the window or on your diner table, check to see of your supply will last the season. The red and green are notoriously hard to get at the local shops once December 23rd rolls around.
#14 Clean the Silver – Do you use good service during the holiday season? When was the last time you checked the condition of that service? Last December 27th when you put it away? Take a good lood and make sure it is presentatable for the company to whom you are serving it. Uh-oh! Need some spit and polish? Call a friend, mother in law, mother, sister to help out. Put on the tea kettle and most inspiring music you can find. Check out some of the easy cleaning suggestions. Here is a suggestion for cleaning silver with basic household cleaners: Clean Your Silver with Househole Basics
The countdown continues. Hope you’re still with us! Only 2 more weeks ’til Christmas:
#16 Empty your Gift Cache – Many people purchase gifts year round and keep a cache of them in their home. This is an excellent idea if you have the money to tie up in a gift cache and the space to store it. If you have neither, this is not an idea for you. One of the challenges of such a cache is remembering what’s in it and remembering to shop at your own cache store before shopping retail again. If you store your cache in a box in a cupboard, this might be the time to lay it out and use up some of the contents. If you don’t need to worry about little eyes (or big ones) searching for Santa’s stash try laying out the gifts on a shelf or book case. Then reviewing and using up the items is litereally like going shopping in your own home.
#15 Gather up Friends who will be Alone this Holiday Season – Not all of us have a home full of family or friends and a calendar full of Christmas dinners to attend. The reality is that many people or new to their neighbourhood or city, can’t afford to go home, live alone and may be alone during the holidays. Whether or not you are one of this group, why not gather of a few friends who are and start your own tradition of a Christmas or holiday dinner with them.
#17 Organizing the Christmas Tree – If you are planning to put up a tree this year you may already have made plans to do so. Or maybe not? Did I hear you say “OMGoodness, we still have to get a tree?”
Many people have moved away from the real deal in order to preserve the trees, their family rooms and their sanity. Whether you go artificial or a sap dripping, needle shedding original article that will fill your home with the smell of a midwinter’s forest, there are still some challenges common to both that can be mastered with a little organization.
- You know it! Book the date in your calendar to buy the tree, bring it up from the basement/attic/garage and set it up. Remember when buying a real tree you will require 24 hours to allow it to settle before decorating it.
- Book the date to decorate the tree. If your family is like mine, that requires everyone home and that requires checking in with 3 other calendars.
- Get out your decorations. Check the lights (switch to high efficiency).
- Throw out any decorations that are broken. Consider giving away any you no longer use.
- Check out your storage for your decorations. Now is the time to consider upgrading to a sturdier box (than the wine bottle box you were using).
- Book a date to take down your tree and pack it all away. Check to see when your municipal garbage collection, if you have one, will pick up the trees at the curb. Remember how you missed it last year and the forlorn tree stayed in the yard until the first yard waste pickup at Easter?
…and the list continues.
#20 – Organize your Baking. Are you doing any bakin this holiday season? Get your recipes out and pick the ones for this year. Now take out your calendar and book the day(s) that you will be baking. Check your pantry for ingredients and prepare your shopping list. Go back to the calendar and book in the time to shop.
#19 – Organize your Childcare. Do you have children home over the holiday season? Did you happen to notice that the kids are off school for a full two weeks (longer if you are in an independent school). Do you have activities prepared for the kids to do during the full two weeks or are they going to sit in front of the video games, computer or TV for two weeks straight. Are your working? Do you have adequate childcare or babysitting booked for the days that you are working or going out?
#18 – Organize you Christmas Cards. Many people have given up on holiday greeting cards. Other people have gone back to sending out this timely message of good cheer and greeting around the holiday season. By now you know the first step. That’s right, get out your calendar and book the time to write them. Follow up by finding the cards from last year (or five years ago) that never got sent i.e. don’t buy more until you have used up what you have! This is a great time to review your address book or contact file and update or clear it out.
