Christmas Planning

I know some of my readers are reading the title of this post and thinking, "Christmas planning?! Didn't we just finish Christmas for this year?" Yes, most of my readers and I did just finish Christmas, but if you're like me than you realize the stress of planning Christmas. That stress of last minute gift planning, wrapping presents, and baking cookies is the stress I want to avoid and through planning can avoid. This year I decided to use a Christmas planner and even wrote posts about the different pages I was using, but honestly I didn't find myself wanting to use it faithfully and inevitably fell behind in planning Christmas. Between not liking the templates I used and life turning into a roller coaster for me I found it easier to fall into my old ways of planning for Christmas. However, my old ways of planning didn't keep me from experiencing massive amounts of holiday-related stress. 

This next year I am going to try to blend my old ways of planning with some of the template pages I actually enjoyed using to create a stress-free Christmas. At least that's the goal of planning ahead. My first tip, which I find is extremely helpful, is to plan a theme early. I realize that this may sound like a lot of extra work or even unnecessary to some, but picking a theme, even if it is just colors, allows you to focus your ideas in other areas. If your theme is How the Grinch Stole Christmas then you know you don't need to waste time making glittering reindeer. Thanks to Pinterest and Craftgawkers there are plenty of wonderful ideas available to look at and inspire you to try, but a theme early on keeps you from feeling overwhelmed. The theme can be as simple or as elaborate as you want or have time to do. This year my theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas and it started out as an elaborate recreation of the scenes from the movie, but I didn't have the time so I ended up simplifying it. This is perfectly acceptable and sometimes necessary as your life changes throughout the year. There is no reason to feel bad about making changes to your theme. 

After I have a theme I like to start designing my Christmas cards. I typically use Shutterfly because I usually have a $20 off promo code or 10 free cards.

I find it helpful to have my holiday cards ordered early because it is one less thing I have to worry about throughout the year while Christmas planning. However, if you have a family with young children ordering Christmas cards early is not practical. While you wouldn't be able to order your Christmas cards in January you could still order cards before December to save yourself the headache of wondering if your Christmas cards are going to arrive in time. If you do have to wait until December, perhaps because you're expecting a change, Shutterfly gives you the option of having them addressed and sent out for you saving you time. This year I am expecting, or rather hoping for changes in my situation, but still plan on ordering my Christmas cards for next year this week because I have a $20 promo code that is expiring. Since I am anticipating changes this year I am working on a design that allows me to incorporate changes that might occur over the course of a year. I found a card template that fits my needs and allows me to leave the photo on the front of the card blank. I plan on choosing a photo that more accurately represents my life towards the end of the year and I will then use a scrapbooking technique to apply the picture to the cards I ordered. A generic greeting that leaves room for a personal update on my family allows me to create a card that can be adapted to my needs.

I also find it helpful to order labels that match my Christmas cards at this time. Again if you are anticipating changes, such as changes to your name or address, you should wait until those changes have happened before ordering labels you can't use. This last year I decided to just order labels that said to and from instead because I have a plethora of address labels. I try to order my Christmas cards and address labels together so that I can verify the sets match, although I have waited until I have received a promo code for free address labels. If you plan on waiting for a promo code or need to wait because you anticipate changes in name or address I suggest creating the labels on Shutterfly and adding the labels to your saved project list. This will make finding the address labels that match your Christmas cards a lot easier and a lot less stressful for you. Since I do have a tendency to order cards and labels in advance I find it helpful to store them in a photo box. The photo box then becomes my Christmas planning box and I know exactly where to look when I need to start writing my Christmas cards.

The odds and ends of Christmas planning have grown throughout the years and what once fit in a photo box now needs to be stored in larger bin. This tends to happen when you have a theme because not all of the pieces end up being used, however you may need them again so it is helpful to store them. For this reason I am trying to be more careful in my planning so that all of my supplies are used for the year. This is a little bit more complicated when you shop for most of your supplies in the after Christmas sale, which is honestly the best time to buy themed items for cheap. I find it helpful to take the number of boxes, gift wrap, or other supply used for the past Christmas and use that number to determine how much of an item I need. It isn't always possible to find the exact number of things you need in your theme after Christmas. If I can't find all of the things I need and something else can't substitute then I don't buy any of it because the chances are I won't be able to find more later. The after Christmas sale is the best time to buy Christmas lights, gift wrap, and cards. There is usually a good variety still and many of the items can be found at 70-80% off. This makes having a different Christmas theme each year affordable. Your gently used Christmas items can then be donated to a charity or to a family you know who could use those items.

Christmas shouldn't be stressful and planning ahead can make the season a more enjoyable time for you and your family. Plan ahead and spend the holiday sharing in the love of your family instead of stressing how you are going to get everything done. Leave a comment below telling me your biggest area of holiday stress or your own tips on beating the stress of Christmas.  

Organizational Tips: Scrapbook Part 1

This month I am focusing each week's organizational tips on scrapbooking. Each week will focus on a different aspect of scrapbooking from photo and project storage to scheduling time to scrapbook. I am not an avid photographer, but many of my friends, family, coworkers, and fellow crafters are with hundreds of pictures being taken every couple of month. While not all photos being taken on their cameras are worth printing and scrapbooking, many are and like them I have these photos stored on various devices. Photos, whether they are worthy or not, end up taking a lot of space on cameras, phones, tablets, computers, and various other locations in print form. Arguably, photos like anything else, can feel overwhelming when they begin to accumulate. Photos, unlike other items we tend to accumulate, can exist in two forms print and digital. Digital photos can then exist on memory cards, USB drives, CDs, DVDs, phones, tablets, and computers. 

There are many ways to organize photos so these are a few of my favorite organizational tips for photos, print and digital. Tip #1: Gather all of your printed pictures and organize your pictures according to theme and year. Pictures you intend to scrapbook soon should be pulled out and grouped according to your scrapbook page. I will post tips for organizing these photos in week 3. There are a few ways to organize the rest of the photos. The first is a photo box with dividers for years and themes. The second is an accordion style photo folder that is predivided. I use the photo folder for photos likely to be scrapbooked first. This photo storage works ok for me, but I am looking for storage that is resistant to fire and weather damage. This concern over fire and weather damage is why many of my photos are also loaded onto my computer and occasionally on CDs as well. 

Tip #2: Organize digital photos into folders on your computer by year and theme. Pictures on my computer are organized under a large folder labeled Pictures with several other folders labeled inside there. These pictures aren't perfectly organized, but I am happy with the progress being made. The sub folders in the Pictures folder have titles such as Christmas 2008, Easter 2013, and SF Anniversary Trip 2011. I can then organize all of the Christmas sub folders into a larger folder along with other folders for anniversary trips, holidays, and special events. At one point I had organized my photos by the people in the pictures, but this wasn't an efficient means of organization. Bonus Tip: Upload your photos to an online website, like Shutterfly or Photobucket, or load on a USB Drive to protect your pictures from human error and computer crashes.

Tip #3: Organize your USB drives, CDs, and DVDs that contain photos with your print photos. This will save you time when you're looking for a specific print. There are great DIYs for organizing your USB Drives, if you want to see tutorial for one of these DIYs comment below. 

Organizational Tips: Kid's Art Work

Children are wonderful, for so many reasons, but especially for their love of gifts. Children love to create art and pickup little "gifts", which they then eagerly share with the adults in their life. You have probably accumulated numerous pieces of artwork and/or little gifts whether you have kids of your own, have little ones in your family or life in general, or are a teacher of young children. These organization tips are mainly for parents, but can be useful for anyone with young children in their lives. 

Tip#1: Choose your child's favorite artwork or your favorite piece of their artwork and put the pictures in frames that match your decor. Depending on preference you can create an art gallery or hang the artwork in your office. Don't want to display the artwork in frames? Display the pictures in magnetic frames on your refrigerator.

Tip#2: Create files for each of your children. Throughout the year put their artwork in the files. Try your best to record the date, the child's age, and the child's description of their artwork.

Tip#3: Once a year have the child go through their artwork and purge the unwanted art. Choose a number to keep ahead of time. Make a scrapbook of your child's kept artwork. The description of the artwork will be a great keepsake in the future. An alternative to this is photos of the artwork and then creating a photo book on Shutterfly or Snapfish.

Bonus Tip: Photos of your child's artwork can be made into cards or photo gifts for family. Custom thank you cards can be made for each child using their favorite artwork. Parents of young children can type or hand write a standard thank you message and have the child practice "signing" their name. Relatives would love receiving this thank you card.

If you have more ideas of how to store children's mementos or artwork please share your ideas below. Areas of organization you want to see more of in the future? Comment below and I will include tips for those areas in a future post. 

Christmas Preparation: Theme

On the night before January 25th, all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, except for this busy blogger prepping for Christmas. 11 months until Santa makes his midnight run and there isn't a minute to spare to bring some Christmas cheer.

Alright, in all seriousness I know Christmas is many months away and most, if not all of my readers, are not even thinking about Christmas preparation for this year. The last few years I have been like my readers and not given much thought about Christmas until October or November. However, last year was so stressful waiting until the last minute that I decided to revert to my old ways and start planning Christmas earlier. Every month, on the 25th, I will post a Christmas preparation idea or tutorial. The tutorials will either be a gift idea for a loved one, a themed decoration, or a party idea (baked good containers, party favors, etc). I hope these posts will allow my readers to get a head start on Christmas.

Every year, even the last two years, I have started my Christmas preparation the same: the theme. I love having a different theme for every Christmas. It allows me to stay focused on ideas for Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and containers for baked goods. This may not be necessary if you only ever have Christmas celebrations with your immediate family, but my family has a Christmas Eve party with relatives and friends every year and a theme is definitely necessary. As I said before, it keeps me focused. Over the last few years my themes have been Sweet Candied Men (Gingerbread men in their candy homes), Frosty's Winter Wonderland (everything snow related),  Santa's Village, and Candy Cane Lane (stripes, lots of stripes). This year my theme is whimsical as A Whoville Christmas, which is essentially a play on How The Grinch Stole Christmas. 

The next thing I always do is design and order my themed Christmas cards. When I actually do this varies every year because I usually wait for "10 cards free" or "$20 off your order" deals on Shutterfly. If you don't use one of these deals then custom photo cards can get really expensive. There are a lot of photo sharing sites with deals of their own so don't be afraid to shop around. I don't always have time to take family pictures that are theme related and sometimes I just don't want to bother with it, which is when I just make the card itself themed, rather than the family photos. Christmas cards are a chance to be creative, a chance to be silly, and a chance to send memories to your loved ones so have fun. 

Boxed In Collage Christmas Card

Bubbles of Snowflakes Address Label

A Whoville Christmas is a really hard theme to order custom photo cards without using themed photos. However, I managed to find Christmas cards and labels that fit my theme. The Boxed in Collage Christmas Card allowed me the space and layout to tell a story. I used silly family photos from this last Christmas and told the story of how the Grinch stole Christmas. A few weeks after purchasing my cards, I received a promotion for free address labels, which I have just ordered. I ended up choosing these Bubbles of Snowflakes Address Labels, which I felt were whimsical and fit the color theme. 

When you are thinking of and planning your theme it is helpful to also specify a color scheme. A Whoville Christmas can be designed in several ways and using several different colors. If I were to use all of the colors that could be used it would end up feeling overwhelming. I actually used two color schemes, but I feel the colors integrate really nicely. The first color scheme is red, green, and white, which is the main color scheme used throughout and the second color scheme is pink, white, blue, and green. The pink, white, blue, and green are accent colors that will be used in gift wrapping. These colors were actually chosen by accident while I was shopping the post Christmas sale. This year I was fortunate enough to find many of the little details, think gift wrap and food containers, after Christmas instead of searching for the perfect items closer to Christmas. I will of course be posting my after Christmas finds at a later time.

There are a lot of pieces that go into Christmas planning from the cards to the food to the presents and it is easy to lose track of your ideas throughout the year. I know there are quite a bit of posts on other blogs about Christmas planners that are available as tutorials or for purchase and I encourage all of my readers to do a Google search for Christmas Planners to find a planner that best fits their needs. Personally, I have never used a Christmas planner and just use a notebook, but I definitely see the need for a planner and have even saved templates over the year to try.

If you want me to make a Christmas planner and show how I use it to organize my Christmas this year please leave a comment below. I look forward to reading your own ideas for organizing Christmas as well as what things you want me to post in future Christmas Preparation posts.