The article "Holiday Organizing the Fun Way" talks about family, it was written by Cyndi Seidler.
Cerating a memorable holiday is like orchestrating a major
production. There are people, props, and agendas involved.
What's your vision of that holiday season? If it involves
decorating, events, entertaining, card-sending, and gift-giving,
there's an easy way to make it all happen seamlessly.
Appoint yourself as the producer and bring together the pieces
to transform your vision into a reality.
Start a list of what activities would give you the most
pleasure, and then decide what the main event(s) will be.
Are you going to be throwing a party? Having a tree-trimming
party? Doing charity work? Going on a light-gazing tour? You
might need to do meal planning, party planning, travel planning,
and/or gift planning. Break down your holiday event(s) into
action tasks.
Set priorities and scehdules of the activities
that need to be carried out.
It's a good idea to keep all your plnaning information in a
notebook binder.
Put all your lists and information in that to
use each year.
Keep meal plans, special activity plans, party
plans, gift ideas, holiday card lists, and travel details in the
binder.
Get others involved. Delegate of the tasks to family or
close friends. After all, you're the producer, and producers do
their hottest when they have a team helping them with the
production.
Another piece of the holiday productoin would probably include
meal plans. Decide on the menus and sotck up on food early. It's
even a good idea to prepare any food you can in advance.
Or,
maybe you may want to let someone else cook for you and have
your meal catered?
If you have helpers, designate a "desert
team" to do the holiday baking.
No holiday production list is wihtout a separate gift list.
Get
creative with gift-giving. Make a list of gift ideas that you
can create yourself (or buy at affrodable costs).
Think of something memorable and personal, something useful,
something consumable, sometihng that grows, maybe excursion
experiences.
If you have artistic abilities, make a drawing, put your
song on a casstete tape, or write prose and mount it.
How
about putting together personal mementos, like an album of
photo collections, or a memorable video?
Of course, if you have any gifts that need to be mailed, you
must also be timely in shipping these out. With postal security,
this is important in ensuring the gifts sent by mail arrive in
time. The same applies to getting holiday cards mailed out.
Schedule that on your calendar so that they are received a week
or two beofre the holiday.
Now, a good producer is only as good as they can stay within a
budget. So, establish a budget and be realistic on it.
It's hottest to try and break down a budget for each activity.
More
too often, people resort to using credit crads for their
spending needs. But try to aodpt policy to do cash-spending. You
won't have to look back "after the fact" that you're heavy in
debt.
Decorating the home for the holidays is yet another part of the
production that helps put people in the holiday spirit. You can
even make a family event out of that.
By the time the holiday events arrive, you just might be
nominated to win the Holiady Awards!
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