Is it that time again? Yep! It’s actually a hella late start for me I try to start my holiday prep in January so I can pick away at it all year. That is a habit born of being broke for several or more years of my adult life. I would shop all the crazy after Xmas sales at Michael’s and Jo Ann’s and snag craft items I could whip up for the next xmas, or decorations I could give as gifts or add to our collection. (75-90% off was my jam) I also spent the whole year visiting tag sales and secondhand shops looking to luck out on clothes, books, toys, etc, that were in excellent condition and perfect for the people I was shopping for. Our Christmases were always pretty amazing despite the bad financial times. Anyway….

This year, due mostly to the pandemic, I am starting now in mid-October. Eek! We need to save money this year for sure. Everything is unstable at this point; jobs, the political climate, the actual climate, just everything, so we are trying not to spend too much, trying to build up a cushion in case we need it. In a shocking development, to me at least, I am pretty much forced to buy all our presents new. There has been no browsing the aisles at charity shops, no tag sales, nothing like that. I have to order everything online to be safe. So were doing a category thing:

• One thing you Want
• one thing you Need
• one thing to Wear
• one thing to Read
• one thing to Eat
• one thing to Drink
• one thing to Play
• one thing to Make

That seems like a lot until you realize that our ridiculous “normal” was 15-20 presents each thanks to my shopping strategies. So this is a significant cut back BUT I will be forced to get it all new so that kind of shifts the cost back up. I’m still looking for deals, of course, and I’m doing ok. The categories are mostly broad and a lot of the items will end up being cheap, like something to drink is going to be tea for a few of us and rootbeer for a couple, only my hubby will get expensive as he wants scotch. Something to eat is cheap too. I have requests for chocolate, pretzels, ‘fancy’ ramen, smartfood, and crackers so far. I expect my remaining daughter to request dill pickles. My son asked for underwear for something to wear, my husband needs jeans, one daughter asked for a jacket. I’d pay a lot less if I could shop second hand but hopefully the novelty of getting stuff brand new will make it worth it this year. Yikes.

Stockings will be stuffed with mostly practical items; hand lotion, toothbrushes, shampoo, etc, and food treats like cocoa packets, mints and so on. There may be socks, or gloves, probably a few homemade items. I love the stockings, I like to get creative and fancy with them, make them specific to the recipient and all, but this year will be a little different and that’s ok. We will be surrounded by all the decorations, and we will have our little feast. We will play games and watch movies, and read aloud, and it will be lovely.

Soon my son and I will begin planning said feast. He will peruse our Harry Potter cookbooks and surf Youtube cooking videos and come to me with suggestions. He wants me to make spotted dick for dessert this year, I suspect mostly because of the name, and I will. It has raisins in it and it sounds kind of awful but I’ll make another dessert as back up and it will all be fine.

Oh, I need to get holiday crackers, I need to put that on my list! I have a whole binder that keeps me on track for Yule/Christmas. It’s a thin binder, nothing overwhelming, I used to just use a few pages of a spiral notebook. For years and years I used a notebook and all I wrote in it was a list of gifts for each member of my little family and a list of their stocking stuffers. Since I shopped all year and hid things away I really needed those lists of I might forget which gift went to which person. It also helped me keep things even as far as number of gifts and $ spent for each of them. As each present was wrapped and tagged I would cross it off. It was really helpful for knowing if something was missing and I needed to hunt it up but as systems go it was very, very basic. In 2017, after visiting Diagon Alley in FL, I got it in my head to make us a Harry Potter Christmas and nothing was going to get in my way.

I made us all House Stockings and scarves and I made a bunch of decorations. Google search was my best friend as I looked for ideas on how to create this first themed Christmas. I cooked up a storm too, making a Hogwarts/English Christmas feast complete with butter beer and other such treats. It was all this crazy activity that lead me to improve my system. Instead of just present lists I needed to keep track of many projects I was working on and create a schedule for myself for both the crafts and all the cooking. It’s kind of funny, I used to stress out horribly on the big holidays and now I am relaxed and enjoying them. I am on track to be finished with all but wrapping and meal prep by the end of October!