Holiday Notes

festive wins & some coal dust

Years ago, Erica introduced me to the idea of Christmas notes – jotting down what went well and what didn’t as a little festive high five to your future holiday self.

I found myself making lots of little mental notes this holiday season so I thought I’d collect them for my benefit, and perhaps yours as well. I’d love to hear what little notes you took from this season, or from previous ones.

Festive wins:

Seeing a Christmas performance in November. As a family, we saw a production of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer the weekend before Thanksgiving. This got us into the holiday spirit early, and left more December weekends open for other fun or the much coveted downtime.

Decorating early! We had our tree up and decorations out by mid-November. We loved this and it will likely become the new tradition. This made the season last longer and we greeted December 1 with a decorated house instead of a decorating to-do list.

We hired someone to put up our outdoor lights. Chris is less and less interested in being on a high ladder or our roof and I approve. We were happy to hire our handyman’s son to hang out outdoor lights for us and will make that part of our holiday routine and budget now.

Creating a holiday movie check list. This was so fun and added to the season’s festivity. We’ll definitely do this again.

Creating an advent calendar for the kids. I have a fill-you-own advent calendar but it’s been years since I’ve put it together in time for the holidays. This year I did! In November, I put together a spreadsheet of the days and what would be in the pockets (either candy or a card with an activity like watch a Christmas movie, etc.) and had it ready for December 1. (Plus, I can use the same spreadsheet as a template for next year.) This kids looked forward to seeing what each day brought and it added to the festivity of the season.

Quite happy with my advent calendar | Another win: keeping peppermint mocha Nutpods stocked all season!

Chris captaining gift-buying and wrapping. Chris took the helm of gift-buying and wrapping for the kids and for the Wharton side of the family. It can be hard for me to let go of control, even as gift-buying can stress me out, so this ended up being a great arrangement that we’ll repeat.

Getting an early start with planning and gift-buying. I bought teacher gifts early and ordered Chris’s gifts earlier than I normally do (early November). I loved checking those things of my list.

Celebrating Cedric’s birthday with an early December friend party, and solid plans for his actual birthday. The post-Christmas birthday is tough on parents, friends! This is the first year I feel like we’re really hitting Cedric’s birthday out of the park (or at least not scrambling behind the scenes). We did a trampoline park birthday party early in December and the price was worth the convenience and giving our Christmas kid a special celebration. We also made plans with a few special activities for his actual birthday. I feel so good about giving our awesome guy a really great birthday.

Hosting our 5th annual Jingle All the Way to School! On the morning of the last day of school before the holiday, we invite neighbors over for hot chocolate, coffee, muffins, and cookies in our garage. Usually I’ve prepped more ahead of time but this year I did everything the morning of. Which honestly felt a little stressful to me (and I’d like to prep better next year) but it all went great. We’ve really got this event down and several people tell us they look forward to it every year.

Hosting Christmas Eve brunch. In years past, we’ve hosted Christmas Eve dinner. This year we decided to mix it up and it worked out because good friends invited us over for their traditional Christmas Eve seafood gumbo! It was a fun day of gathering and I think we found a new tradition.

Wrapping up Girl Next Door work by early December. This year, Erica and I worked ahead more efficiently than ever. We recorded all podcast episodes to take us through early January and I gave myself a deadline for editing and scheduling in early December.

Coal dust (where to improve):

Keep things moving along. I got a great start on holiday tasks in early November, but then with life’s busyness things fell by the wayside and I still felt some holiday stress. Next year I’d like to find ways to keep moving forward on things each week. For example, I had everything I needed for teacher gifts by mid-November, but didn’t deliver them until the last two days of school which were already really busy days.

Pick a day to deliver neighbor and community helper gifts. Like above, I had good intentions and even a good start on neighbor cards and cards + gifts to our mail person and recycling/garbage truck driver. Yet I wasn’t delivering most of these until Christmas Eve (and still have yet to deliver our recycling/garbage truck driver card and gift!). These are things that can be done at anytime and so, as Gretchen Rubin wisely says, they are often done at no time.

Keep a consolidated holiday task and grocery store list. With so much going on, this season I often felt like I had a few running to-do and grocery lists in my head. This lead to forgetting things at the grocery store and needing to go back, or missing an opportunity to take care of a task efficiently. All part of a busy season. But next year, making time to take a minute and write everything down and capture it in the right system (grocery list, task list, etc.) would help.

Overall, it’s been a really good holiday season! I had moments of stress and slight overwhelm but that’s hard to avoid during such a busy time. Mostly, lots of wins that I’d like to repeat next year!

What about you, friends? What holiday notes do you have from this year or previous years?

P.S. All my holiday posts.