December 27, 2010

Can you believe that Christmas 2010 is behind us?  As always, it snuck up on us and then became history in the blink of Santa's eye, didn't it?

So what did you do the day after Christmas?  Here's what I did:

Used the Amazon gift cards I got for Christmas. I got a pink (of course) Cuisinart 7-speed hand mixer and 6 books. Yes, Amazon cards DO burn a hole in my pocket!

• Cuisinart CHM-7PK PowerSelect 7-Speed Hand Blender, Pink

• The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life: Cruelty-Free Crafts, Recipes, Beauty Secrets and More

• Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes

• Scatter Vegan Sweets

• Whitewash: The Disturbing Truth About Cow's Milk and Your Health

• Good News for All Creation: Vegetarianism as Christian Stewardship

• The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur: Over 140 Simply Delicious Recipes That Treat the Eyes and Taste Buds

Ordered Beachbody's Brazil Butt Lift. My plan is to integrate this different workout in with the second round of P90X that I'm about to start.  Confused muscles are happy muscles!

Balanced my checkbook (boo!)

Went crazy on the furkids with the FURminator deShedding Tool and cleaned their recent barfage from my carpet with the magic carpet cleaning potion

Did a boatload of laundry using my new favorite laundry detergent: Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent Free & Clear.  Adios, Tide!  Let me know when you stop animal testing and maybe I'll consider coming back to you.  Til then…

Chose the Franklin Covey planner refill that I want for 2011: Blooms Monthly Tabs

Packed up all of the 2010 SPCA Bake Sale materials for next year. Our total so far for this year's sale is close to $3,400.

And last but not least, I roasted up a big pile of Brussels Sprouts to try to counteract all of the chips, lemon bars and pasta salad I've eaten in the last couple of days!

Just slice them up, and then toss with a touch of olive oil, garlic powder and lemon pepper.

Roast at 450 degrees for around 30 minutes or until crispy.

So that was my day.  Did you feel a fire lit under you to get things organized and ready for the new year, as I did?

~BigSis

December 3, 2010

BigSis just talked about her Top 4 Tips to get your Christmas Planning Started and since we're both crazy, obsessed organizers and list makers, I wanted to talk a little more about this topic before we move on.

There isn't anything more important around this time of year than planning, planning, and more planning. It's an absolute necessity for me in order to keep myself from getting totally overwhelmed and stressed out!

I have this adorable little hard back holiday planner that I bought at Hallmark five years ago and I still use it every year.  I actually leave my previous years pages in the planner so I can refer back to them when planning my shopping list. I like the fact that I can look back and see what I bought family members and friends in previous years.

In my planner, there's a tab for the Calendar, Notes, Card List, Shopping List, and Gifts Received. The pages for Christmas cards are ideal because below each persons name and address is the year and a place for you to check off if you sent a card and if you received a card.

(Helpful hint: Write all your addresses in pencil; so when an address changes, you can just erase it and you don't end up with a bunch of old, scratched out addresses in your planner.)

I haven't checked Hallmark to see if this particular planner is still available, but why buy one if you can make your own? I've discovered through browsing the Internet that there's a great selection of forms available to download for free.

Here are a few sites you can visit for FREE Christmas Planner forms.

• Organized Christmas has a huge selection of forms to help you create your very own customized Christmas planner, including printable dividers. (Their Christmas Card form is very similar to the ones I have in my planner.)

• Clever blogger, Meck Mom puts her spin on Christmas planning by creating these great forms for planning, budgeting, and gift giving.

• Family Fun has instructions and some cute forms to help you create Ann's Amazing Holiday Planner. She has a couple of different forms such as Holiday Memories and Holiday Menus and Party Planning.

Hopefully, some of this info will help you get organized for this Holiday Season. I've already printed out some of these forms to use in addition to my Holiday Planner but now I've got the itch to create myself an entirely new full size Christmas Planner. 🙂

~LilSis

November 10, 2009

Hey LilSis, I think it's a really appropriate time to talk about stress since we're all about to go into Turbo-Speed Stress Season. We all have holiday stress for different reasons. Many of us get so excited at the holidays that we overcommit and underestimate how much time all of these things will take. We may have financial issues that make the holidays stressful, and unless we decide to be smart when it comes to our financial planning, there is a chance that this money may not see us through the rest of the month. When we start the holidays off on the wrong foot, like not having enough finances, it could seriously affect how the rest of the break goes. It nearly happened to my friend once, but luckily he decided to invest in things like Bitcoin and even went one step further and decided to Buy Bitcoin with other payment methods, or Bitcoin mit anderen Zahlungsarten kaufen as they would say in his native language of German and because of the trading that he did, it wasn't long until his financial issues were no more. He managed to get rid of them and could live the remainder of the holidays in a much better way. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen to everyone and they may have other pressing matters to worry about.

Some people are sad at the holidays and dread going through it, and feeling like they have to do things they really aren't up for. Other people have family issues that can't be avoided at get-togethers. Many us of just feel pulled in too many directions at one time. One of my friends was having a lot of stress surrounding caring for her elderly parents, who could no longer care for themselves, therefore they could try and get some in-home assistance to give her a break and enjoy her time with her parents again. There are many places that can provide this service such as Seniors Helping Seniors Baton Rouge, and help take the weight off a family member's feet.

For whatever reason, we're ALL going to have stress to some degree over the next couple of months. Maybe we can all help each other out by sharing some ways to tame stress since it's such a universal experience! I'll start us off.

• My favorite way to manage holiday stress is to plan and start early! I already mentioned that I'm doing another Christmas bake sale for the SPCA on December 14th. How can I commit three full weekends to baking, just before Christmas? It helps that I'm kuku/kookoo (how do you spell that?), but I actually started planning a week ago. The baking team has already had a meeting, and we all know pretty much what we're baking, except for a couple of new recipes that I'm going to test-drive this week. I'm going to have all my Christmas shopping done before baking time starts, as well as all the bake sale shopping, and packaging for the bake sale goodies will be ordered this week.

How does my bit of planning translate to organizing your holiday season?

• Even though it seems way too early to start thinking about the holidays, do it now! How often do you hear yourself say that the holidays just “snuck up on you”? There's no sneaking! Christmas comes at the same time year after year! We just haven't planned for it!

• First of all, have a brainstorming session with yourself. Find half an hour of quiet time, and just make a rambling list of everything you can think of that you need to do between now and New Year's Day. As more and more things come to mind later, add them to your list. Just getting thoughts out of your brain and onto paper will give you a serious chunk of peace of mind. Sign me up for some of that!

• Now go back over the Master List you brainstormed, and start making Detailed Lists. If you included “buy gifts” on your Master List, then make a Gift Idea List. List everyone you want to buy for, and then start listing any gift ideas you have. You can see where the holes are. If you have no ideas at all for Uncle Paul, then make yourself a note to call Aunt Paula to find out what Uncle Paul wants. If your list includes “send Christmas cards”, then start a separate list of the recipients, and check to see if you're missing any addresses. Look for those addresses now, and not on December 22nd! You'll also know how many cards to buy when you're in the store, and won't have to run back out for more at the last minute.

• Make yourself a notebook, folder or binder with all of your lists and keep it with you! If you work outside your home, take it with you in a tote. It doesn't do any good to have a plan if you don't have it available to refer to when you need to.

• Now that your lists are in the works, next get yourself a calendar going. You might like a big wipe-off calendar that can be displayed in the kitchen for everyone to see, or maybe a calendar in your planner or on your phone works bet for you. Whatever it is, start adding every party, every cookie exchange, every school function and every travel itinerary on it as you find out about them. Grill your family for all of their commitments. Update this calendar immediately as new functions are discovered. Threaten your family that failure to notify you of a commitment means they have to eat the fruitcake that's been regifted since 1974. Or you could say that Santa will bring them a lump of coal, but that would be pretty mean. 😀

• Practice saying “no”. The reality is, you won't be able to do everything that is asked of you for the next couple of months. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. You can say “no” to good things in order to say “yes” to the best things!

That's how I get my holiday season organized, and it really seems to help me to just write things down! It's a simple thing but it has a huge impact. You won't wake up in the middle of the night worrying about whether you're going to forget to bake the two dozen cupcakes for the school if you've already put that on the calendar.

If you have other ideas, please pass them on. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be on a mission to find other thoughts and tips that we think might help us all enjoy this glorious season even more!

~BigSis