thechristmasconnoisseur.com

APRIL’S GOAL: MAKE TRAVEL PLANS

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“11 Months To An Organized Christmas” with the Christmas Connoisseur.

🌲❤️🌲Travel experts say the best time of year to make your Christmas travel plans is as early as possible. So be sure to follow my posts this month and start looking into where you want to be this Christmas season.

🌲❤️🌲There are many magical and exciting places to spend Christmas, but first you must determine whether you want a “White Christmas” or a “Sunny Christmas”.

DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS?

🌲❤️🌲There are many amazing destinations that will give you a magical and possibly “White Christmas”.

DREAMING OF A SUNNY CHRISTMAS?

🌲❤️🌲If snow and cold isn’t your ideal dream Christmas, then let’s explore some destinations that will shed some light on your Christmas plans.

Making your travel plans now will give you more time to relax and spend time with those you love when the Christmas season is here.

🌲❤️🌲Be sure to look out for posts all month long to help you make your Christmas plans for this upcoming holiday season. Do all the planning now so you can relax and enjoy more time with your loved ones when Christmas time is here.

MARCH’S GOAL: CHRISTMAS CARDS

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Christmas Connoisseur’s “11 Months To An Organized Christmas”

🌲❤️🌲This month’s goal is to make a plan for your Christmas cards.

🌲Are you going to make your Christmas cards? If so, starting now will make the whole experience of making Christmas cards so much more enjoyable and less stressful. I love turning on Christmas music or a Christmas movie at any time of the year while I make a few Christmas cards. I promise you it will bring a little Christmas cheer to your heart anytime of the year!

🌲Christmas card kits are a great way to quickly have almost all the items you need to make cards. Depending on the kit, the only additional items you may need is glue or more embellishments. One of my favorite Christmas Card kits is by Anna Griffin. The kits have everything you need and you can make beautiful cards in no time! Depending on the kit, you might just need some glue or glue dots.

Christmas Card Kits make it so easy to make your own cards. This is a kit from Anna Griffin. She has beautiful kits that have a lot of embellishments.

🌲If you plan on using ready made Christmas cards, then see if you can find cards now. Amazon has a great selection of Christmas cards all year round.

🌲If you plan on sending photo Christmas cards, then look through the designs now and save your favorites. There are so many beautiful designs offered by every company that you may experience decision fatigue when trying to quickly pick your favorites during the busy holiday season. Do yourself a favor and spend time looking through the photo card designs now so all you will have to do in a couple months is choose your pictures for your card. If you’re unfamiliar with companies that offer photo cards, then check out 2 of my favorites, Shutterfly.com and Walgreens.com.

How To Keep Memories With Christmas Ornaments

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How to keep memories with Christmas ornaments.

🌲❤️🌲One of my favorite ways to keep memories is with Christmas ornaments. We have a slim profile tree that is designated as our “Memory Tree”. Since our eldest was a baby, we would get an ornament each year where we would put a family picture in it. Now after our eldest is 19, our tree has 19 years of family picture ornaments plus other sentimental ornaments.

TIPS FOR CREATING YOUR OWN MEMORY TREE:

🌲 Find ornaments that have the year on it. This makes it easy to remember when that picture was taken.

🌲If you find a picture ornament you love that doesn’t have the year already on it, just write it on the front or back with a Sharpie.

🌲You can find a variety of picture ornaments in a wide range of prices. Of course there’s always the family Hallmark ornaments with the year on it, but you can also find picture ornaments at craft stores as well as many online retailers, like Amazon. The ornaments in the picture above are all from Amazon.

🌲Besides Christmas pictures, try to include other memories like yearly school pictures, family vacations, big milestones like 1st birthday, baptism, wedding, new home, new pets, etc.

FEBRUARY’S GOAL: ORGANIZE ADDRESSES & CREATE ADDRESS LABELS

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🌲Have you ever thought you were finished sending out Christmas cards only to realize a few days later that you forgot to send a card to someone?

🌲When it comes time to send out your Christmas cards, are you frantically searching for all of the addresses?

🌲Are you tired of handwriting all of the addresses on your Christmas cards during the busiest time of year when you could be baking cookies or driving around looking at Christmas lights?

February’s Goal is to gather all of the addresses for people you send Christmas cards to. Then make address labels.

FEBRUARY’S GOALS:

  • Gather all of the addresses for everyone you want to send cards to.
  • Make a master list with all the names so you can make sure you don’t make duplicate labels.
  • Make address labels for everyone on your master list.
  • Make return address labels with your address.

While this may take some time to do up front, it will save you so much time in the end when Christmas time comes around. You’ll find yourself enjoying the whole holiday season more while still able to do the tradition of sending Christmas wishes in the mail.🌲❤️🌲

JANUARY’S GOAL: Put Away, Plan, & Purge

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🌲❤️🌲For the month of January the goal is to “Put Away, Plan & Purge”.

PUT AWAY

🌲When it comes to putting away, a great tip I learned from my mother-in-law is to take pictures before you put away. This will make decorating for Christmas 2025 much easier. You can store these pictures in a binder designated for “Christmas”. I will talk more about that binder in another post.

🌲If you have extension cords, outdoor timers, and garlands that you have multiples of and want specific ones to go back in a certain spot this Christmas, then take a couple minutes to label them with the location you want them to go. This has been a huge time saver!

PLAN

🌲Making a “Christmas Planner” and plan will help you to have an organized Christmas this year. This can be lots of fun to put together and you can put as much (or as little) detail into it as you like. Have fun!🤗

🌲TIPS FOR MAKING A CHRISTMAS PLANNER:

  • Use a 3 ring binder
  • Get tabbed dividers. Some of the categories you may want to include are: food, gifts, calendars, decorating, Christmas card list, entertaining / parties, travel, “Thank You’s”
  • Find printable templates for a Christmas Planner on Etsy. Most of them only cost a few dollars. This isn’t necessary but it makes it super easy to quickly put your Christmas Planner together and make it look really festive!🌲

PURGE

🌲I know it can be hard to get rid of Christmas decor, but sometimes having too much Christmas decor makes it hard to see your most important, special items. As Cassandra from the ClutterBug says, “When everything is visual, nothing is visual”.

🌲Use the questions above to go through your Christmas decorations and if your answer is “No” to one or more of the questions, then you might want to consider getting rid of it.