I’m sure our Polar Express was a hit and everyone had a good time as they always do. Now we really need to focus on Christmas! Here are some of the things that we will be working on this week:
Continue reading “Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 10 (1 Week Before Christmas)”Tag: printable
Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 8 (3 Weeks Before Christmas)
This week we will be having our St. Nicholas Day celebration and putting up our Christmas tree and Winter decor so those will be our main focus but we also have our annual Polar Express party coming up so we will be focusing some attention on that as well. Here are some of the things that we will be working on this week:
Continue reading “Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 8 (3 Weeks Before Christmas)”Free Printables for Holiday Shopping plus some tips for buying for special needs kiddos!
It might be a little late in the game for these goodies but I needed to make some for my Holiday Planner anyway and I figured I’d share them here just in case anyone else could use them. They really aren’t anything fancy but I did try to make a couple of festive options to help you feel a little more in the Christmas spirit.
We plan to start implementing the 3 or possibly 4 gift rule in our home because things are just so expensive and our kiddos really have everything they need and a lot of what they want so we don’t want them asking for tons of things that they won’t or can’t use. We really want them to stay focused on the reason for the season … we are dedicating these weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for an Advent Study. We also want them to think about gifts and appreciate the time, thought, and money that goes into each gift they receive and not what they expect to find under the tree.
Continue reading “Free Printables for Holiday Shopping plus some tips for buying for special needs kiddos!”Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 7 (The Week After Thanksgiving)
Thanksgiving is over but there’s no time to rest yet as the real preparations are beginning for the holidays! One of the biggest things we need to do is to take time to sit down and evaluate how our Thanksgiving was. What was everyone’s favorite part? Was there anything that didn’t work well? Do you need to set up a rotating schedule to have dinner at other family member’s homes? (Odd year here, Even year there, or every 3rd, 4th, year?) Would it be better to have a potluck-style meal where everyone brings something? Was there anything you would like to do differently? Start now for your planning for next year so you don’t forget these ‘little things’! We will also be getting all of our Fall decor ready to be put away next week so we can start pulling out the Christmas decor.

Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 6 (The week of Thanksgiving)
Thanksgiving is almost here and I can’t wait! Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted about some of the things we are doing to help prepare our homes for the holidays and hopefully prevent a little of the CHAOS. We will continue to review those things and work on a few more things this week. Our list is as follows:
- We will take a little extra time during our weekly ‘Home Blessings’ to make sure that everything is cleaned, windows are shined, and floors are swept, mopped, and vacuumed.
- I will be checking my Holiday Planner for the timeline of things I need to do to prepare for Turkey Day. ex: defrost turkey, clean oven, clean kitchen, empty fridges, get out centerpieces, etc.
- I will review the menu lists in my Holiday Planner so I can add all of the perishables to my weekly grocery list so I can get them purchased ASAP and not have to make a last-minute grocery run on the day before as things will definitely be CRAZY and many shelves may be EMPTY!
- I’ll review my list of ‘make-ahead’ items and try to knock out a few of them so there will be less to do at Thanksgiving.
- I will pull out some of those Thanksgiving activities that I found earlier and let the kids work on them while I work on other things. The kids will help with preparations when they can but there are some things that I just want to do myself.
- If we have decided to do any Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping we will review our planned lists and budgets.
- I’m also trying to plan to do the 3 gift rule here this year but I’m not sure how it will go yet. I’ve got some links about this idea HERE, HERE, and HERE. This will hopefully encourage the focus to be more on Jesus than Santa and the gifts he will bring.
Most of all we will do our best to be thankful for all the family and friends that we have been blessed with and try to create some special memories with them during the holiday season! We pray that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!
For more great ideas you can check out the FlyLady website HERE.




