The Christmas Prject #9 Get Your Out of Town Gift List Together

by kathilipp | Nov 28, 2012 | Christmas, Home | 5 comments

My life was so simple. Then I married Roger.

You see, my whole family lives within  a two hour drive of my home. We get together for holidays and exchange gifts like the Norman Rockwell painting says we are supposed to do.

Then I had to marry a southern boy.

When Roger was looking for his first grown-up job, as a senior at Purdue University, he told God his requirements. “God, I will go anywhere except California.” Yeah. That’s a good idea. Tell God what you won’t do.

So twenty-five years ago Roger got a job in Cupertino with HP and he has been a California boy ever since.

The only problem is that he left a whole family who all live in Georgia, and who all celebrate Christmas.  And somehow, each year I forget that their gifts require an extra step or two.

So today, your project is to get your plan together for any out of town gifts. There are three approaches you can take:

1. Order all your gifts online and have them shipped from the company.
2. Buy gifts and ship them out from home.
3. Make sure you’ve married a local boy or stop talking to out of state relatives and friends.

Let me know what approach you subscribe to, as well as any tips you have for gift giving for out of towners. I would love some fresh thoughts about what to do for my mother-in-law.

And here is a great suggestion from reader Kim Ward: “Kathi, with our family far away we use Wishlist.com to help organize our giving. The girls were asking each set of Grandparents for the Thing Most Wanted and that resulted in duplicate items that needed to be exchanged and sore feelings for Grandparents not getting the crazy reaction they were hoping for. Wishlist.com allows you to post ideas from any website easily or create your own manually. Then family can select what they like, ‘reserve’ it and link to the item to buy it immediately if you want. It will also send you an e-mail reminder of what you’ve reserved.”

Later in the projects, my husband Roger – the shipping guru (if you’ve ever ordered something from our store, he’s probably the one who sen it,) will be sharing all of his mailing tips for getting those gifts to Grandmother’s house.

The Christmas Project #9 It’s Ketchup Day (yes – again! but with some added suggestions to get you ahead of the game)

by kathilipp | Nov 27, 2012 | Christmas, Home | 0 comments

Today is a day to get caught up on a Project you haven’t had time to complete or get started on something that needs to be done. So if you need to finish up ordering Christmas cards, creating your binder, or some other previous Project, here is your guilt-free chance to get it done. If you are all caught up, here are a few ways to spend your time:

• Pull out your gift wrap from last Christmas
• Address Christmas cards
• Wrap gifts
• Clear your space for your tree and decorations
• Decorate

You can do it. I’m so proud of you!

The Christmas Project #6 Get Your Christmas Gift List Together

by kathilipp | Nov 24, 2012 | Christmas, Home | 0 comments

I love hearing your feedback about how the Project is helping you make this holiday (and next). Look at how Renee is using the binder to prepare for next year (and BTW – we will be doing the Project again next year, so get a head start now!):

“I’m already thanking you, Kathi!  I love the Christmas notebook idea.  I even wrote out everything I needed for Thanksgiving dinner, including my grocery list, location of all the relevant recipes, and time schedule to get everything in and out of my single oven by dinner time.  Last night after all the guests went home and the dishes were in the dishwasher, I made notes on what recipes need to be doubled next year, which tweaks to the recipes should stay and which can go, (and, okay, I’ll make fewer sweet potatoes, but you can’t make me skip them altogether!).  I printed off a copy and added it to the front of my notebook and I’ll know right where to find it next year!” Renee

And now for Today’s Project: Write out all your gift ideas/what you’ve already bought for your gifts. You can print out lists to keep in your holiday binder over at my author page. (See link below.)

Wouldn’t it be great if the gift giving part of Christmas was the least stressful? Here are a couple ideas to help you take the stress off:

1. Limit the List For several years, we limited the number of gifts we bought for each kid: One spiritual gift, one box of clothes, and one fun gift. You may think that it sounds very Little House on the Prarie-ish, but with all the grandparents, aunts and uncles and friends, the kids weren’t hurting for gifts. Trust me.
2. Extended Family Swap We’re doing this with my family this year. Every time I start to panic about not having a gift for my brother, I stop, take a deep breath, and remember – “He’s not on my list.” Huzzah. If this is something you want to try, talk about it with your family now, not the week of Christmas.
3. Ask Ask people what they would like. I know it’s fun to surprise people with something perfect, but really, why stress yourself out?
4. Keep Your Ears Open – Print out the Christmas List over at my Author Page and start to take notes for each person you’re buying for. Maybe your son mentioned a book he’s interested in, or your husband received a renewal notice for his favorite magazine, make a quick note to get it (or jot it down for next year.)