Repeat after me: there is no such thing as a perfect Christmas.
Your Christmas might not look like a Hallmark movie (and good gravy, wouldn’t we all love an ornately decorated Victorian farmhouse mansion to cover in garland?). Your Christmas might not even look like the one from the Santa Clause.
Whatever Christmas you love, that’s the perfect Christmas for you.
For me, Christmas is this: the tree lit, watching movies on the couch with Danny, Forrest, and Remus, fresh cookies in the kitchen, a candle lit and smelling like either 1) cinnamon or 2) pine trees. That’s Christmas. When I was younger, Christmas was making sugar cookies with my mom, watching the old, classic claymation movies on TV with my brother, and waking up at 3am to open presents (and try to make as little noise as possible with my brother). Christmas every year can be something different, but I want to put the disclaimer here that, there is no perfect Christmas; there is no prescriptive Christmas.
If your Christmas a little Christmas tree with rainbow fairy lights and a Netflix binge on your laptop, then baby, godspeed.
No matter what your Christmas is, I want you to have the most perfect one possible.
For the last two months, I’ve been working on a Christmas planner for myself. I’m planning to make a BUNCH of embroidery projects for my friends & family this year, and organizing everything was starting to become… a lot. I had lists upon lists of thread numbers, patterns, fabric I needed to buy, hoop sizes… it was a lot. I was tired. So I started mocking up a gift planner sheet where I could record everything I needed.
Then, I started working on a planner for my decorations, to start cataloguing everything I had and figuring out if we would need to buy more lights (aka which of ours died during the year they were in storage). From there, I started making all kinds of parts to this personal planner: bucket lists, shopping lists, cookie backing lists, a memories sheet to add to my scrapbook. I showed it to Danny once I had it printed and he said: “are you going to share this on your blog?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me to share it, but I started digging around on Pinterest and there are some Christmas planners out there… but so many of them put the onus on gifts and buying and planning out your Black Friday. That’s not something I’m super interested; I just needed one place to keep my lists, keep a running tab on my embroidery projects (and who I’ve gotten a gift for and who I haven’t, so I don’t have to crawl under the Christmas tree to check), and maybe write down a few important memories.
I thought: why wouldn’t other people enjoy this?
So here it is: the Christmas planner of your dreams. It includes:
3 pages of gift lists to record who has a gift & who needs a gift (plus a notes section for any details, such as crafting supplies). This is perfect if you like making gifts, like I do!
A decoration planner to record what you have where. Keeping track of decorations always feels like a chore. Come February, I end up realizing I’ve had bits of decor still up, with everything else packed away.
A shopping list for home, work & school, and “misc” to help keep you organized when it comes to remembering if you need more flour or powdered sugar for those super important sugar cookies.
A bucket list to keep track of movies that you must watch, activities that make your Christmas (trip to the Christmas tree farm, anyone?), cookies that you love to make, and more.
A memories page to record the best things that happened, everything you did, and your memories of Christmas day right away. This page also includes a section of things to remember for next year, like that your kiddo loved a specific movie or song!
A page just for Christmas Eve & Day to write down your plans. This page actually has two sections for Christmas eve because I found I needed much more room than was available! But you can use the second section for notes or Boxing Day!
I keep mine in a folder on my desk, but I plan to laminate the pages once Christmas is over to save in our family binder. You can keep yours loose leaf if you want, put them in a binder, cut them up to stick in your planner—whatever works!
I hope you love this planner as much as I do. To download, click the button below—it will take you to a separate landing page, but don’t worry! Your planner is well within reach.
Thanks for reading & happy holidays! If you’d like more planners like this one, let me know in the comments!
