Before we dive back into more Christmas/Holiday season planning I want to share a couple of photos from my project day accomplishments!  Yesterday, my plan was to pull the wedding keepsakes from a blue rubbermaid tote and transfer them into an old hard sided suitcase that I picked up on the weekend.  I love love love keepsakes but don’t want them to be stored where we can’t get to them or in a way that it is hard to get to them.  By dividing them up into people or in this case our marriage we can pull them out on birthdays or anniversaries and look at everything.  For our kids, this means that the boxes of keepsakes will be part of their memories as much as they are mine.  If you have ever opened a box from 20 years ago and wondered what everything is - you will appreciate that you can create a memory in itself by opening the box annually.  This also helps you to keep the collection to only the favourites.

This picture shows you that our new suitcase sits ontop of my son Cale’s trunk in our family room.  Just seeing it there makes me remember so many great times.  Right now,  I only have our wedding bits and pieces but I am sure as I go through the piles of junk that are cluttering our storage area - I am sure to find some other special items from our marriage.   My other accomplishment was my order to Sears for two more trunks like the blue one (that was mine when I was a kid!) for my other two children.

OK - now on to Christmas planning.  Last week I shared that I use Thursdays as my planning day.  I look over my gift list and modify and check off things I have purchased.  I also plan the meals and baking.  I am a creature of habit so my meal plan and baking plan have not changed in 20 years so with the exception of maybe adding a new dish here and there I am set so this part is really done.  The other area I focus on today is making sure my three shopping lists are up-dated.  The gift list which is a master list of all things gifts needs to be updated and kept in my purse (that spreadsheet gift list I keep in my daytimer out of site!)  The other two lists are food and stuff - one list I chip away at a little at a time from mid October until Christmas and the other is the list I use a few days before Christmas, on the last shopping outing before the big guy arrives!  Because my lists are pretty set I am also using Thursday (and an hour each week at the pool) to do Christmas cards.  Last week I checked my stock of cards and this week I am going to go through my list of friends and family and make sure I have addresses.  Canada411 is a great site for address lookups. One thing I wanted to do last year and didn’t is to create a photo montage instead of a family letter.  For the people who we see often they know what we are up to - it is the people we don’t see we want to update.  The photo montage would certainly give them an inside look at our life and be fun for me to make!

So if you are looking for a task - pick one of these.  Plan the meal and add the ingredients (even what you have) to your master list.  If you have ingredients pick a spot to store them so they are there when you need them.  Cross these items off the list.  Remember to put the perishable items on the last minute list and the rest of the items on the main shopping list.

For cards - if you do send cards check to see if you have cards, if you don’t put that on the list.  Then check your addresses and spend an hour online getting the addresses together.

Have fun!

Helen

Now that it is getting a bit cooler outside I am feeling a little less crazy knowing I am getting ready for Christmas!  Actually, have you noticed that the Christmas stuff is already in the stores?  It use to be that this wouldn’t happen until after Halloween but things are changing.  While the commercial side of the season bugs me a bit - I do like that I can get some of the supplies I need!  I actually bought a few things on Sunday from my Holiday Shopping List and some wrapping supplies too.

OK - so if you are just joining us welcome.  Starting today you are going to scale back a little so you can have what you NEED to do done - leaving you lots of time to enjoy your kids and family this holiday season!

Today is project day for me - and one area of my house that drives me nuts (other than the huge pile of laundry that is always calling my name!) is the storage area.  I have worked on this a little at a time for the past several years but I realize that I love to keep things.  I have a bin for each of us for keepsakes but I have found this has not worked - the bins are not large enough for my needs and I have decided to get the kids each a trunk which we can use as tables in our family room (this fits our look and feel).  We like to look at these items on their birthdays but the bins have made it hard as things are really tight and I don’t like to get them down for fear of not getting everything back in.  For my keepsakes and my husbands, well we don’t have a lot and most of what I have can easily be put into scrapbook, so I am not going to get a trunk for us.  I did however, pick up a cute old hard sided suitcase for our wedding keepsakes.  So my goal for today is to order the two trunks (Sears has them on sale until November!) and to go through the bin with our wedding keepsakes and transfer the stuff I really want to keep into this cute trunk.  I will share a picture tomorrow.  I won’t worry about the kids stuff until the trunks come in so I can pick and choose what will fit and then get rid of the rest.  I find photos can capture a memory as much as keeping the actual item.

What is your project for today?  Remember - this project should in some way help you on your journey to Christmas.  For me, it clears the path to the decorations.

Have fun!

Helen