It’s the middle of September. Kind of hard to believe there are less than 100 days until Christmas! Yes, you read that right! Less than 100 days until Christmas. When it comes to the holidays, are you a planner or more of a last minute kind of elf? Personally, I consider myself to be more on the organized side of the Christmas chaos. Sure there will always be last minute things to take care of or the unexpected house guest, but for the most part I try and get a grasp on the reigns of the Christmas sleigh a few months before the madness begins.
Back in July I created a printable Christmas Planner and made it available for purchase in my shop. I’ve made a few of these over the years, and I think this is my favorite. Although this is still a work in progress, I’ve got enough done and wanted to share with you what I’ve completed so far!
Even though the calendars looks a little sparse, more events will be added to them as time goes on. There are several things we do during the season that have become a tradition, such as going to the Holiday Pops concert by the Florida Symphony Orchestra and various Holiday Boat Parades. But due to Covid, venues and organizer still trying to figure all these things out. We also may be throwing in a getaway in November, so as soon as these plans are finalized, I will add them to the calendars. And guys, I know there are a lot of planner addicts out there and would be prettying up their calendars. But not this girl. I really don't have time to do that. I just want a space to write in and leave it at that.
The next section in my planner is the address section. As I was looking at the address from my old Christmas Planner, I realized many friends, and some family members had moved over the past year. So I wrote several messages through Facebook and some text messages asking for their new addresses. I was so happy to here back from almost everyone! I’m still waiting on about 3 or 4, but they will be easy to add in. I’m so glad these addresses are all updated now and I won’t be scrambling to find them when it comes time to send out Christmas cards! (addresses have been blocked for privacy)
There are other 3x4 cards and overlays in the kit for Christmas stamps and photos that are not pictured here. They will be added to this section when the time comes!
The Gift Section of the planner is going to be so helpful! My “Master Gift List” page will be filled in as we get closer to the holidays, but these “Santa Reports” are being filled in now! There are two different sized “Santa Reports” in the kit, a 4x6 and a 6x8. The 6x8 size I am using for our immediate family: Chris, our two sons, our daughter-in-law, and I filled one out for myself as well (sometimes the Sill men can use a little help when it comes to gift-giving 🙄). To make these reports resemble something like a “case file” I cropped photos of everyone into 1.75” squares, put them in a 4x6 document in Photoshop and printed it out. Then I just trimmed each photo from that 4x6 printout and attached them to the “Santa Report.” Super fun!
The Decorations Section is partially done.
And finally we have the Recipe Section.
One of my main goals with this planner was to consolidate all of the recipes I make throughout the holiday season into one place. Whether they were recipes for Thanksgiving Dinner, Christmas Morning Breakfast, or Christmas Cookies, I wanted all of these recipes in one binder instead of having to pull out various cookbooks old magazines or search the web for these recipes I use year after year. Because there were so many recipes, I ended up using InDesign on my iMac to create these cards. I know, I know, I’m a mobile memory keeper! But there are some projects where the hybrid scrapper in me comes out! As a graphic designer InDesign is a program I use for page layout. It was easy for me to set up pages and drop the JPG of the 4x6 or 6x8 Recipe Cards into my document. I then I took the time and gathered all of those recipes together and started to type everything out! I then exported my documents as PDFs, printed it out, and then trimmed to place them in the page protectors.
Some of the recipes have photos and some do not. That will definitely change once these dishes are made. I will make note of which recipes I want to photograph and will be prepared to do so when the time comes. Some recipes I may prepare between now and the holidays just to get the shot prior to the busy day they will be prepared on. (Hmm...I may need to select a few days to do this and add them to my calendars!) So although this section is very recipe card heavy, this will definitely change once the photos are taken. I know these recipes will not stay in the order they are in now. Using this binder for my planner will make it easy to move things around when the time comes!
Some of the recipes are crazy long. So long that the instructions needed to be carried over to a second card. I turned these recipe cards into flip pages to accommodate a photo. So far I have two of these pages. One for the Christmas Tree Puff Pastry and the other for the Beef Wellington. I think I’ll have two more (cookies) once I get the photos taken. I will do another post with a tutorial on how I did this in the upcoming weeks.
The printable Christmas Planner is available in my shop. The pictures above do not show all that comes in the kit! To get a better idea of what is include, click the link to the shop in the navigation bar above There is a link to the shop in in navigation bar at the top of the page or go directly to the product listing by clicking the image below:
