My Awesome December Checklist

December means Christmas.

Christmas is awesome.

Also, Christmas is overwhelming.  Just look at my Christmas Pinterest Board!  There are not enough hours in a year, let alone a single month, to accomplish all of the cute crafts, clever DIY gifts, and fun decorating ideas that I find!

To keep from getting overwhelmed, and because I just like lists a lot, I decided to make a December Checklist, and put on there the events and activities that are my highest priority.  That way, I won't get distracted by all the other stuff.  If I just get this stuff done by December 23rd, I'll be doing great and December will be so much fun!  (I didn't include Christmas Eve/Christmas Day stuff.  That's a whole other list!)

My Awesome December Checklist

1)  Go look at Christmas lights.

Our family takes this way more serious than most.  We don't just drive around looking at lights.  We put award certificates in the mailboxes of the houses we like best.

We make up the titles as we go, and each year we love coming up with new awards like, "Best use of Marine Life in a Christmas display" or ""Most Likely to be Seen from Space."  Of course, we have the standards like, "The Santa Claus is Coming to Town Award" for a great Santa display, and "The Silent Night Award" for a beautiful nativity display.  This is one of our favorite Christmas activities, and we've been doing it for years.  We even have a facebook group that award winners can join.  It's so much fun!

2)  Make lots of cookies.

I love making Christmas cookies.  I even have a Santa Claus apron!

I did a blog post last year about some of my favorite Christmas cookies, and I'm looking forward to trying some new ones this year, too!  They make great gifts, and are always a hit at parties!

3)  Go to a walk-through nativity.

My mom's church does this every year, and it's awesome.  It's usually ridiculously cold, but it doesn't matter, 'cause we just get all bundled up.

Plus, at the end, you get cookies and hot chocolate, which is extra fun.  There are tons of churches that do this kind of thing, so if you're not near here, I'm sure you could find one online.

4)  Go to a family Christmas event.

There are tons and tons of options in this category.  We like to go to our local Zoolight Safari, where the zoo puts up over a million lights and they do special night events.  It's really fun, and since Cricket is all about lights right now, I can't wait to see her reaction!

But like I said, that's just one option.  There are parades, tree lightings, outdoor ice skating rinks, and lots of other fun family events to choose from.  Our local historic theater shows Christmas movies during December, and I know that's a lot of fun, too.

5)  Go to a Christmas concert.

Our church always does a Christmas concert night where the children's choir (adorable) and the adult choir (inspirational) perform, and then we have a huge potluck.  (I love living in the South.)  Almost every church does some kind of musical cantata or concert, and so do the symphonies and local children's choir, so it's easy to find something.  Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit like listening to Christmas music!

6)  Listen to Christmas music until I hear it in my sleep.

Speaking of Christmas music...my goal every year is to completely submerse myself in Christmas music at all waking moments to the point where I am singing them in my sleep.  In the car, in the house, when I sing to Cricket, it's gotta be Christmas music!  Look for a post about my favorite Christmas music coming soon!

7)  Read Christmas books.

Brian and I read Dickens' A Christmas Carol every year out loud together.  I cannot recommend this enough.  If you do nothing else on this list, do this.  I love this book so much.  And it's funny, because I'm not really a huge Dickens fan, but this one is just pure gold.  It's hilarious and sarcastic and witty and sweet and interesting, all in turn.  Read it!

Also, I have been slowly accumulating some Christmas books for Cricket, like The Grinch and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.  She has loved having all these new and interesting books to read.

8)  Do a Christmas kids' craft.

To quell my desire to do every single Pinterest Christmas craft, I have decided to just pick one, (ok, maybe two) and have fun with it.  I got some foam stickers to do a craft with our playgroup, and I'll probably do one more just with Cricket.  Plus, we'll do one at the library storytime, so we're in no danger of missing out in the craft department.

9)  Watch Christmas movies.

We haven't really let Cricket start watching TV yet, so this is for the grownups.  I have been slowly collecting Christmas movies for ten years, now.  I have all the good ones.  The Grinch is my favorite to watch over and over, and A Muppet Christmas Carol is my favorite Christmas movie ever, but it's special and we save it to watch on Christmas Eve each year.

10)  Go to at least one party.

Of course, there will be lots of parties, but I put "at least one" so that it doesn't become a weird Christmas Pokemon game of "gotta catch all the parties."  One is enough, two is great, three is fun, and much more than that becomes stressful in a hurry.  We do our big party at Halloween, so we don't try to throw one ourselves.  I try to just pick a few that my friends are throwing and really enjoy them.

11)  Stare at the lights on the tree in the dark.

This is one of my favorite things about the Christmas season.  Turning off all the lights except the Christmas lights, drinking hot chocolate, listening to Christmas music, and curling up on the couch to watch the lights.  So peaceful and beautiful.

12)  Go on a date.

It's easy to get so busy during December that you barely even speak to your family.  I know we already  have one week this month where we are out of the house five nights in a row!  I didn't want to forget to spend some time with Brian, so I included this in my list.  Our plan is to go see The Hobbit when it comes out, but even just getting coffee or window shopping would be nice.

13)  Do random acts of kindness.

It just doesn't feel like Christmas without this.  If you've never gone through a drive through and anonymously paid for the person behind you, you should try it.  It will make you downright giddy.  When we were little, my mom, my sister, and I would take hot chocolate to the guys working at the Christmas tree lot when we got our tree, because they're usually freezing out there!  I've also seen ideas on Pinterest for "ding dong ditching" your neighbors and leaving a plate of cookies or a small gift on their door step.  There are lots more ideas, but it doesn't take much to get you (and someone else) in the Christmas spirit!

14)  Pictures with Santa.

Last year we went to Bass Pro Shop to get a free picture with Santa, and it was great, but I learned something very important.  GO EARLY!  Do not wait until the Saturday before Christmas to do this.  You will wait in line for two hours and your baby will poop all over her adorable Christmas outfit.  Trust me.  (Good thing I brought a spare outfit just in case!)

15)  Do a Christmas service project.

Some of my favorite Christmas service projects are Angel Tree, Operation Christmas Child, and Heifer International.  This year, we also have an opportunity through our church to man a gift wrapping table at the mall to raise money for a local girl's shelter, so that will be awesome.   Service projects are a great way to adjust my perspective and keep from getting too focused on myself.  (This goes for all months of the year, btw.)

I can think of a bajillion  more things I would like to do, but I'm trying to be realistic.  Also, I didn't put decorating the house or the tree on there because I think that's kind of a given.  So is drinking hot chocolate.  :o)

Anyway, here's a nifty graphic with my checklist on it.  What's on yours?

Awesome Tips for Organizing Your Kitchen

If there is one room in my house that I would like to keep organized, it's my kitchen.

If there is one room that never stays organized, it's my kitchen.

This leads to a cycle of continuous reorganizing, replanning, and then messing it up again.

I'm getting better though.  My issue is that I have very little counter space or drawer space.  I have lots of cabinet space, but it's not all the right size for what I would like to use it for.  These factors force me to get creative when it comes to finding logical, practical places for food and utensils to live.

I have worked for a while on the best ways to organize my kitchen, tried out a lot of things, and come up with a few really good ideas, mostly from Pinterest, but also a few from Brian and a few from my own desperate brain.  Here are my most awesome organizational tips for the kitchen.

1)  Magnet Strip for Knives

Brian suggested this because he's a genius.  My knife block took up a lot of room on  my counter, so why not get rid of it and mount a magnetic bar to the backsplash instead?

Obviously, this has to be well out of reach of children, but it works so well!  No more figuring out which hole is the right size for which knife!  No more big clunky block taking up a square foot of valuable counter space!  No more pulling three handles out before you find the knife you're actually looking for.  Genius.

2)  Produce Baskets

I saw this idea on Pinterest forever ago, but I modified it because I wanted bigger baskets.  It took me over a year to find the baskets I wanted.  For some reason, none of the places I looked carried anything similar.  Brian finally found these at Home Depot, I think.  We got three, and I love them.

Since I am trying to eat a lot more fresh food, that means lots of produce that was just sitting on my counters, again taking up space!

This way, it frees up my counter, and makes it look much nicer, too!

3)  Hang Measuring Cups and Spoons

This is another idea I saw on Pinterest, and it works really well, although I simplified mine.  I just got Brian to put some hooks on the inside of one of my cabinet doors, and I have one set of measuring spoons and cups that I keep on them, plus a couple of extra hooks for extra spoon sets.

That way, I can grab just my 1/8 teaspoon without having to use all the other spoons in that set, too.  Plus, no more rifling through drawers to find the one you need, and it frees up more space in my drawers for other things!

My only warning about this is that it took me a while to get used to the motion and the sound that they make when you open the cabinets.  For the first week or two, I just about jumped out of my skin every time I opened the cabinet door, thinking something was jumping out at me.  Now, I don't even notice it.  I have heard that the silicone collapsing measuring cups and spoons would help with that, but I don't own any.

4)  Leave Room for new things

Whenever I organize my pantry, it always looks so nice.  Everything is visible and accessible, and all the like items are grouped together.  Baking goods, canned goods, oils and vinegars, etc.

Then I go grocery shopping.

This always frustrates me because of course I return home with new things, like another canister of oatmeal, or a new bottle of honey, or a new bag of flour.  These things don't have a home, because the almost-empty bottle of honey or canister of oatmeal is still in it's place.  I empty my flour into my canister, but I still have two pounds in the bag.  Agh!

What usually happens at this point is that I just make room for them haphazardly, stacking them on top of something else, shoving the oatmeal next to the hot chocolate because it's the only place it fits, etc.

And now I'm unorganized again.

My new solution, then, is that this time, when I organized my pantry, I intentionally left open spaces for new items.

Space on the shelf next to the Cheerio's.

I know, that sounds so elementary that it can't possibly be worth mentioning, but I figure it took me nine years of running my own house to figure it out, so surely someone else has this problem, too.

5)  Accessibility is Key

I don't know if anyone else does this, but I default to organizing my kitchen pretty much the same way my mom did.

(Well, I mean, when I organize my kitchen and don't just stack stuff on top of each other like an edible Jenga game...)

After all, it's what I grew up with, so I'm used to it.  The problem is that my kitchen now is not at all set up like the ones I grew up in.

For example, my mom always stored the pots and pans in the drawer under the stove.  I did too, in our old apartment, but when we moved into this house, I found that the drawer below the stove is teeny tiny, and not at all tall enough for even one pot, let alone several.  I kind of panicked.  Where do pots and pans go if not under the stove?

So for about two years, they have been in a bottom cabinet beside the refrigerator, because they didn't fit in most of the other cabinets.  This is super annoying because I had to basically kneel down to get to them, and they were just stacked on top of each other, so they were always clanging around and making noise, and I almost lost a digit every time I tried to wrangle one out from under all the others.  Not at all convenient or accessible.  Also, moderately dangerous.

I cleared off one shelf that had previously held my casserole dishes and other baking pans,

and now it holds my pots and skillets!

This make so much sense, since I use them more than just about anything else in the kitchen.  It might not seem like putting them in the pantry is a logical choice, but if you can look beyond where you think things are "supposed" to go, and see where they would be more accessible, you might come up with some creative new ideas for organization!

6) Label

I love to label things (and people, but I'm working on that...).  I have a great little label maker and a huge supply of computer labels ready at a moment's notice.  I saw some pictures on Pinterest of a kitchen someone had organized and they had labeled everything so neatly, it really made it look more polished.

I got a bunch of storage containers from the Dollar Tree, printed off some labels on my computer, and voila! So easy!

(Actually, at the time, it wasn't that easy.  I kept trying to find some super cute templates, but none of them were customizable, so it was either use their six pre-made labels or just be happy with basic labels that say what I want them to say.  I chose the latter.)

Labels are great because you never have to wonder, "Is this all-purpose flour, wheat flour, white wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, pasta flour, or bread flour?"  Yes, I have all of those flours.  Don't judge.

Also, when you run out of something, you don't have to remember what was in the container!  Heaven forbid I should accidentally put organic whole wheat pastry flour in the container that used to hold pasta flour!


I hope that this inspires you to organize your kitchen in a way that is more helpful and easier to use.  I'd love to hear some of your favorite tips and tricks as well!

Unless your advice is to buy fewer types of flour.  No one wants to hear that.