House & Holiday Plan 2014 Has Begun

Week One:  Planning and Paperwork

So this past Sunday kicked off the House & Holiday Plan for 2014.  Each week I will attempt to declutter my home while getting ready for the upcoming holidays.  I was so excited and motivated that I decided to start a little earlier.  Starting with 'control center', my somewhat home office.

One day last week I came in from work, walked straight into the guest bedroom and just started cleaning and decluttering.  I went through the pile of paper that had been sitting on my desk, shredded/tossed what I no longer needed and gathered up and sorted everything else in nice manila folders.  Now all I need is a small file cabinet to keep everything in.  Until then they are neatly stacked on my bookcase.

Next I wiped down my desk, computer and printers (boy do those printers collect dust).  Then Wiped down the bookcase where I store my holiday notebook, recipe books, Christmas cards, etc.  Looks really good in there now.  I can find what I need and everything is at the ready.

In addition to decluttering paperwork, there's the planning to do.  But first, clean out my holiday notebook.   I pulled everything out from last year, stapled them together and placed them in the back of my book.  They will be used as a reference while planning for this year.  I already had the new sheets printed and ready to go in the book: the budget, shopping list, gift list, menu...  So then there was answering a few questions of myself like, How much in total do you plan to spend this year?  What amount will you spend on gifts? What special gifts do you have in mind? What type of food will you be serving Christmas Eve?  And so on.  The only thing left from this week's tasks is to complete the exercise.

Right now I'm feeling pretty good at what I've been able to get accomplish.  Mind you this is only the first week.  I'm hoping 'regular life' doesn't de-rail me too much the remainder of this year.

Checking Out The Pantry

I was reading a topic over at Organized Christmas, "Save Money: Beat the Holiday Grocery Game," when I decided to go through my kitchen cabinets to check the dates on spices and baking ingredients. I only had a few baking items that were expired and threw out. My spices were in great shape as I had just bought them during last year's holiday season. After checking everything, I added things that need replacing to my grocery list.

It's important to check your pantries for expired items. You don't want your delicious dishes and treats to be ruined and make you ill by using old ingredients.

Just thought you should know.

Countdown Week Three

It's week three of the countdown. This week has been all about gifts and giving. I had a long list of people who I wanted to give a gift to so I started way back in January. I'm proud to say that I have about 85 percent of my gifts made or bought. Gifts I have left to get are those that contain treats (food) like the movie baskets, pizza kits, an Italian basket and a wine & cheese basket. I haven't wrapped any gifts yet. I planned a whole day to do that in early December. And when it's time to wrap gifts, my mailing and wrap station is set up and ready. Over the weekend I spent some time sorting through the gifts I've bought/made thus far. I sorted according to families. Each family will have different but coordinated wrapping paper from the other family. It makes knowing whose is whose a lot easier for me. I always group each families' gifts together but by the time everyone arrives and places there gifts under the tree, the groups get mixed all up and I'm on my hands and knees reading the names on cards.

Tuesday one of my childhood friends and I went to Walmart and I was able to knock a few more things off my master shopping list. I bought more gold ornaments for the main tree, found some cute Christmas paper bags for 25 cents each...the perfect size for the acrylic post-it note holders, a 3 ft. tree to go on the balcony (though I think I want a larger tree out there instead). Plus I decided since the tree for the balcony was going to have multi color lights, I would also hang multi icicle lights from the roof-line so I bought two boxes. I found a pretty ceramic poinsettia soap pump to go with the poinsettia theme in the bathroom and a set of red charger plates for the dining table. One of my best friends who was with me really liked the silver charger plates but was short on funds (she's a single parent raising three boys and times are tough) so I got them for her. I could see she really wanted them and she has always been there for me in the worst of times. It made me feel good that I was able to do this, allbeit, small thing. Besides the holidays are about sharing and giving. We had a good time looking at all the decorations and gift ideas. Right now she sounds like a little girl (lost her voice) so I was teasing her all evening.

Earlier in the day I worked on an altered clipboard. It's nearly done. I just need to find the right font alphabet stickers to spell out "days until" and tags to attach the numbers. I have some really neat stickers I used to spell out "CHRISTMAS". I made three, one for the office, one for home and the third is a gift for my best friend.

Speaking of giving I need to call squeeky today. I just remembered I have some gold and white frosted glass ornaments she can have for her tree. While talking about our decorations, she mentioned her colors were gold, silver and white. They will look great on her tree. I bought them from Big Lots on clearance two years ago and never used them.

Count Down To Christmas Week Two

This is the second week of the Christmas Countdown. Earlier this week I received my copy of names of members participating in the card exchange so I have started signing and addressing cards/envelopes. I have a cute little Christmas basket holding the cards which will go in the mail the last week of November. We have members from all over the world participating in the exchange which is very exciting.

Yesterday I walked over to the KMart behind my job and picked up this guy.

It's a singing, melting snowman. It will be part of the decor in my office. Now I need to find an animated Santa. There wasn't much to see as this Kmart is just starting to put out their Christmas stuff. This weekend I'm going to my favorite two places, Dollar Tree and Walmart, plus a couple of other places. I hope to pick up several gifts to cross of my list and do a little window shopping.

I was looking through the Oriental Trading catalog when what should I see? A set of snowmen chair covers. I was so excited...will order them next week. Part of the decoration plan for my office was to cover my chair with a snowman cover and to cover the lady I share the office with chair with a santa hat cover.

Well it's nearly lunch time. A few of my coworkers and I are in the mood for fried Lake Trout.

Christmas Countdown Begins!

Woohoo! Sunday kicked off the Christmas Countdown over at Organized Christmas and I for one am glad it's here. I came to a point where I didn't know what to do next. This week were getting organized and most of the suggestions for this week I'm proud to say were done weeks/months ago.

Every day were supposed to spend at least 15 minutes getting organized. I have spent most of the year doing this. (LOL) I turned my computer station into Holiday Central. There I have my notebook planner, computer, wrapping supplies, and other essential items needed. Above my computer station I posted a copy my my holiday calendar as a reminder of what I will be doing over the next two months. I have scheduled in parties, shopping trips, family activities, cooking, cleaning, decorating, etc.

Other things we are doing this week:

• Put together a gift list...mine's has been done since January.
• Create a Christmas card list. This year I will have lots of cards to send out due to members at MHH joining in the Christmas Card Exchange. I think we're near 40 members. This is going to be so much fun and I already reserved a place for everyone's card.
• Plan/schedule pre-holiday home improvement projects. The only improvements I need are to have the ceiling in my living room painted and new blinds for the bedroom windows. I will speak to management at my apartment next week to get these scheduled.
• Start planning now if you will be traveling over the holidays (If not done already). I never travel out of town during the holidays. I love to be home during this time and lucky for me most of my family lives nearby (anywhere from 5 to 35-40 minutes away). My brother being the farthest as he and his family just moved into their brand new house in Pennsylvania (Just over Maryland State line) in August.
  
• Make arrangements for overnight guests. As I've said everyone lives nearby so I don't have overnight guests. Oh, just remembered I do have one cousin who spends the night with me. She and her son always spend the night at my house Christmas Eve and then on Christmas Day she spends the day with her father's side of the family. I need to call her today.
• Make appointment for photo sessions. I sent out photo cards of me to family last year. This year I'm going to print photo cards of my nieces and nephews, have each one sign the cards and send them to family members. I just thought of this idea (LOL).
• And finally, schedule carpet cleaning. It's suggested that you make appointments now as cleaning company's schedules get very busy this time of the year. I do this myself along with cleaning my living and dining room chairs.

Later this week I will do the family holiday values and home spruce-up exercises. The spruce-up should be short and sweet as I've just finished giving my apartment a thorough deep cleaning. Once Thanksgiving is over I just take down the fall decor - making way to start putting up Christmas decor. I love doing the family values exercise. That wasn't always the case. The first time I did the exercise, it seemed very hard to do. It took me days of thinking about earlier Christmases and what was great about them and what was not so great about them because I had nothing documented to fall back on for inspiration. That's why I'm so glad I found CEO Organized Christmas. Now each year I can look over exercises from the last 4 or 5 years and see how my holidays are a little more organized and most importantly how I am able to actually enjoy them and not feel overwhelmed or stressed. Now I know what recipes were a success or failure, if my family enjoyed themselves at the annual Christmas Eve family dinner...if they liked their gifts, did I stick to my budget, etc.

I'll post the results to the exercises later this week.