I have always been fanatical about providing a memorable Christmas for my family. I want things to run smoothly, so I have had two Holiday Planners that I have used over the years.
Marth Stewart Ultimate Planner and
Flylady Holiday Journal. I have adapted them to fit my and my family's needs.
Martha Stewart's planner suggests to send holiday cards on the 3rd week in December. She also doesn't have her Christmas tree up and decorated until the 3rd week as well. I think that is way too late.
The Flylady Holiday Journal requires most everything to be done by December 1st. I don't even think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. But the Flylady Holiday Journal has cute family traditions like making your own christmas wrapping paper using plain white paper and using stamps, stickers etc to decorate it. We did this one year and the kids had a great time. Unfortunately, if presents are supposed to be wrapped by December 1st this doesn't make for such a great Christmas tradition. My kids and I also decorate gingerbread houses which has been a fund tradition. Some of those houses have made it to Christmas without being eaten.
I need your help with new ideas on having this holiday season run smoothly, how to bring the Christmas spirit into the home, and making this the best Christmas yet. What does your family do? If you have any ideas, please post them or email them, and I will share your ideas here.
3 comments:
One tradition that we have not adopted yet but I would love to start is having your family go serve dinner at a homeless shelter or at least bake a part of the meal to be served, or just go down and sing Chirstmas songs while the people are eating! I love that one! Helps the kids appreciate how blessed they truly are!
One year a home teacher brought us a 12 days of Christmas candle. Just a tall slender candle with 12 even sections marked on it. He also provided a scripture reading guide for the 12 days. He used the 4 gospels and the book of mormon account of Christ's birth. The instructions were to lite the candle each night and read the Christmas story bit by bit until his birth on Christmas Eve. The burning candle gave us plenty of time to read and discuss while also providing a countdown to Christmas.
-Robert
My family has traditions of making candy, visiting temple square, and my favorite, Christmas caroling. On Christmas Eve we would go around visiting the widows in our ward and sing a couple carols to them. We would always bring fresh baked bread and home made jam for them. Then we would go home and have soup and then rice pudding. My mom would hide a almond in one of the bowls of rice pudding and who ever gets it would be able to open a family gift which usually ended up being a fun board game to play.
-Traci
On a Saturday in December (we went yesterday) we go to Krispy Kreme's (Layton) in our jammies, get the free donut and an assorted dozen for later (the kids choose which they want) and head over to Hobby Lobby (across the street) and everyone picks a new ornament for the tree. Hobby Lobby usually has their ornaments 50% off in December.
(In case you are wondering who I am, I went to high school with MaryEllen and just clicked to your blog from hers)
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