The Johnson Crew!

Do you get stressed out at the holidays are there a ton of things you want to do but just run out of time to do because your list is so long that's totally been me like every year and I really don't like that feeling so after the craziness of last year I sat down and I made a list here are all the things that I need to do in order to have the christmas of my dreams right and I put dates next to each of the things I was like this is what I'm going to do next fall to be sure that my december is lovely

And wonderful and focused on time spent with my family rather than my giant to-do list so if that sounds like a dream come true for you let's get into today's video hi welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Sarah and I have four kids yes it's a lot to christmas shop for and like my husband I got to shop for him too you feel me it can be overwhelming the christmas time so I am going to share with you the list that I have come up with

And don't worry you're not going to have to take notes throughout this video I have put a printable in the description box below and a link to the google doc so that you can go in and you can edit it and change it to your specific to-do's and the dates that you want to plug in for it so that it will work for you and just side note I'm not one of those people that's like yes it's september put on all the fall clothes this is just you know christmas themed

But I normally am the kind of person that is like let's stretch out summer as long as possible and not deal with a holiday until it's like it's here um but now that we have all these kids like that type of goat with the flow isn't really working for me so doing a little pre-planning so that we can really be in the moment when the holiday time arrives one of the most stressful things to do each year is to get out the christmas cards if you are not planning on sending out christmas cards you can skip to the next chapter of this video

But if you are this is something you're going to want to tackle really early and in fact I'm putting this video out kind of late for getting new family photos done this year you guys might have photographers in your area who are offering like a day of mini sessions and they they turn that around really quick for you but if not it might be hard to get on somebody's schedule this fall so you might be using an older photo or just one that you're taking yourselves just for future reference you probably want to go ahead

And reach out to a photographer in the summertime to schedule your photos for september or october because you want to allow enough time for them to get the photos back to you and then enough time for you to then go and pick your favorite and design a card and order it all that good stuff so after that you've got to get everybody's addresses so you're going to want to go ahead november 1 go ahead and contact the different people that you need to get updated addresses from

And start compiling that list the best way to do this is to put it into a spreadsheet you can use excel or you know google sheets that makes it super easy and then you want to make sure that you have that wrapped up by the last week of november so the deadline that you need to put on yourself for picking your favorite photo for your card and designing that card is the weekend after thanksgiving once thanksgiving is over we usually have a a pretty chill weekend we're usually putting up our christmas tree

So this is a good time to get that done it's fun and then the deadline for ordering the christmas cards is going to be december 1st so last year I discovered that vistaprint has a mailing service which is awesome I know there are other christmas card companies who do this as well this seemed to be the most affordable at least last year was um and we got postcards that was even more affordable because our list had gotten pretty long with personal and business cards going out

So postcards were the way to go standard shipping for vistaprint is eight business days so if you order your card december 1st that means everybody is getting your christmas card about two weeks before christmas if you want them to get it sooner you can shift these dates up a little bit earlier but I tell you the mailing service was super worth me not having to sit down and address a bajillion cards highly recommend disclaimer I am not the type of person who likes to just shop all year long or super far in advance for people I think that is an awesome way to do it my brain just doesn't work that way

So I've broken up my shopping into three categories my kids and spouse my friends and my family like extended family so the second week in november I'm gonna shop for my friends whether that's in a store I'm definitely an online shopper big time love the convenience especially with having kids at home there's not a whole lot of time for me to go out shopping and I don't want to take them with me let's be real third week in november I'm gonna shop for my family members

And then the fourth week in november which is thanksgiving week I'm gonna pick a day that's chill maybe the day after thanksgiving and sit down with my kids and we'll make their wish list together and then I can send that list to our family members who they really appreciate having some ideas and then that weekend at night after the kids go to bed I got this tip from one of my friends that they do a date night in so after the kids go to bed they cozy up on the couch with some snacks

And that's when they shop online for their kids I love that idea so I'm gonna try that this year we'll sit down together maybe split up the kids that we're shopping for and knock it out and it might take more than one night and that's okay and then the fifth week in november which leads into the first week of december is when I'm gonna shop for my husband I definitely feel like I have to wait the longest to shop for him because he will of course just buy things for himself

So I need to be sure that he hasn't gotten whatever it is that I'm thinking about getting him and we tell each other okay don't buy anything else for yourself the rest of this month and then also in that first week of december my husband is the one that loves to do the stocking stuffers so he'll go out and get all of those items one day that week basically I just want to avoid having to go shopping in the stores anytime in december because I feel like it's just a mad house if you're like me you like to fit in as many holiday-themed activities outings throughout the whole month of december every year there's just

So many fun activities and I just love to take advantage all of them but of course we do have a business and other things going on so it's important that I actually take the time to make sure that we schedule that out and and make time for it so if you have found in the past where I wish we had time to do this and this but we just don't take the time the weekend after thanksgiving and look at your calendar get on facebook see if there are any christmas events that you want to go to

And go ahead and start putting things in your calendar so that you don't double book yourself advent calendar do you ever get on instagram or pinterest you know mid-december and you're like oh yeah that's a thing advent calendar I wish I had done that now half the month has gone on everyone last year I finally like made it on time and it was so great but this year I want to be even more ahead of the game so it's not something that I'm trying to cram into the same weekend as everything else we're doing

So I'm putting this on my calendar for the weekend before thanksgiving now caveat I am not the one that hosts thanksgiving so if you are maybe you want to put this at a different time in your calendar if that's like a stressful weekend for preparing food for the following week anyways take the weekend before thanksgiving and go ahead and work on your advent calendar I do have a video on how we made ours last year and it's one of my favorite versions that we've made

So far the kids really loved it so I'll link that video above and below so you can watch that next and in that video there is a link to a google doc of all the activities and bible verses that we used for each day that's in the calendar and you can go in there and tweak those but the way I do that is I go and I look at our calendar while I'm preparing that document and I see the activities that I have on my document

And then I match them up with when we could actually do them in december so that they're not opening something on december 2nd that we can't do all the way until december 20th you know what I'm saying so I try to line it up with when we're actually going to do that activity and then a little tip for you go ahead and go to dollar tree that weekend and get all the little items and candy that you want to put into the advent calendar and then of course you need to have time to put up your tree

And decorate for christmas we are a fake tree family all the way so we sometimes put it up the weekend before thanksgiving or right after if you get a real tree then that might have to be a little bit later right and then this leads me to the huge announcement that I have for you do you remember being back in school when you had holiday class parties I used to love those days and now that we are homeschoolers if I want my kids to have that experience I'm the one who has to provide it for them right

And so something we did last year was we had a class party we took off of school that day we decorated we played games together we did a craft we made like a cute holiday themed little treat together and it was awesome it was so fun it was just a great time for us to have together because if you're like me school days are not like always beautiful memories yay nice fun mommy I'm unfortunately not super fun mommy all the time this was actually really meaningful for me as much as it was for the kids because I felt like I was given the day off

And I was able to just really focus on them and be fun mom and we had a great time together so that experience for me led me to do holiday class parties for several other holidays throughout that school year and we had so much fun and after our valentine's day class party we had these different things left over that could have definitely been reused to play the games over and over again and I thought oh you know what my friend in south carolina would love this she'd love to have this I am going to just package it up

And and send it to her um for for her and her kids and so sent that all you know wrote out the instructions to each game and packaged it up all cued and sent it to her and she loved it

So on that note with our calendar the schedule we're doing um I want to put in there that I'm going to do a holiday homeschool class party for my kids you know a week or two before the holiday and the last thing on your calendar is wrapping christmas presents I like to do that the week before christmas I like to sit down at night when the kids go to bed put a christmas movie on and rap either with my husband or I'll get together with another girlfriend

And we'll wrap all our stuff together and it's it's just fun and then the very last thing on your calendar is after christmas is over go ahead and go to the store and buy that discounted gift wrapping and any other discounted things that you think you would like to have for next year that's a great time to get it extra christmas lights for your tree all that good stuff so that is the whole list it is linked down below so you can go and you can tweak it to what works best for you

And go ahead and get that stuff on your calendar so you will just feel like an organized rock star this holiday season with no stress just easy breezy enjoying it living in the moment I can't wait it's gonna be so much better I'm excited let's do this together let's be organized this year okay well thanks so much for joining me today if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're new here most of my videos are about homeschooling and life as a family of six

And traveling as a family so if that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button down below and join us here every week all right I'll talk to you guys later merry early christmas fall I don't know bye merry christmas gotcha christmas in september christmas in september