Holiday Countdown 2010!

That's right friends, it's that time of year! Halloween is less than a week away which means there is less than 2 months till Christmas. I am Christian so most of the plans will revolve around Christmas but please, don't let that discourage you if you celebrate a different Winter holiday. Basically everything I will be sharing with you here can be adapted to fit your needs.

This will be my first year using any of these formal tactics so some of us will be learning together. I would love to hear some feedback and your experiences and advice along the way. If you have a different version of something I suggest, please share! If you've used what I'm suggesting and it didn't work for you, or it worked amazing, tell us about it!

I'm going to start easy today. Today is all about STARTING your holiday planner.
I will be using a combination of forms found over at FlyLady.net and OrganizedChristmas.com

I already have a control journal so I'll just be adding my pages to a dedicated section of my binder. If you don't already have one, grab yourself a three ring binder. All of the pages I will be using or talking about are completely free to download and print.

So your first mission for today is to head over to FlyLady.net and check out the Holiday Control Journal. Print out only the pages that you find useful, there's no need to waste paper or ink on things you won't read or use. I personally printed out the following pages:

Get The House Ready To Cruise Through The Holidays (it's a page on Crisis Cleaning, very useful)
Holiday Gift List (to Purchase)
Family Traditions
Catalog Orders Checklist
(I also printed out the Packing List to keep in my control journal year round)

Your next mission is to head over to OrganizedChristmas.com and take a look at all of the options they have for Christmas planners. Try not to get overwhelmed with how much they have to offer. Just take a few minutes and see what they have. You can always go back and print out more pages later if you want to.
I printed the following pages:
Christmas Countdown 2010 calendar (it goes from Oct 24th-Dec 4th after that it's about celebrating not preparing)
Gift Closet Inventory
(I also printed out the Birthdays and Anniversaries page for my main control journal)

Next, if you have twitter, follow @ChristmasCntdwn b/c they will give you daily tasks to help you get your home ready for the holidays.


That's it for now. I don't want to overwhelm myself, or you with too many tasks. As flylady says, I can do anything in 15 minutes. (Much more than that and I lose interest) 


When you're done putting your holiday planner together, take a picture and post it in the comments. I'd love to see it!