Christmas Post- Christmas Planners

So most people hate to think about Christmas because of the stress it can create. Like any event though, the key to getting through it is, you need a game plan. Over the years I've seen quite a few planners and this year I've actually created my own. Unfortunately I'm having some problems accessing the documents on my external hard drive so I'm unable to share it with you at the moment, but the second I'm able to open the files, I'll upload it for you all.

For now I'll feature some of the free printable Christmas planners I've found and pinned to my Christmas pinterest board.

The first featured Christmas planner is from Life Your Way and includes; address book, baking planner, binder cover, budget worksheet, calendar, card tracker, card worksheet, checklist, decor inventory, decor storage, family traditions, gift closet inventory, gift ideas, gift list, handmade gifts, how we celebrated, master to do list, menu planner, order tracker, ornament journal, party planner, planning calendar, shopping list and thank you card list. You can find the free printables here.

Mom's Favorite Stuff has a more basic planner that contains baking list, gift list, meal planner, activities planner and Christmas card list which can be found here.

In 2013 as part of her "25 days to an organised Christmas",  Here Comes The Sun author Kelly created a gorgeous green and red themed Christmas organizer that includes binder cover, December calendar, address list, gift list, decoration storage, menu planner and Christmas traditions. Click here to discover her ingenious design.

Cooking In The Chaos has a 10 page Christmas planner in a very cool light blue and maroon that includes a to do list, Christmas card planner and checklist, gift planner and checklist, advent calendar planner, December monthly planner, Christmas shopping list and meal planners for Christmas eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day plus a blank template in case you're planning a dinner party that can be found here.

Anna Moseley from Ask Anna, has a full 42 page printable planner available in her Etsy shop but gives a sample of her work as a free printable in her 'have an organised Christmas' post including a baking planner, black Friday planner (irreverent for us Aussies), December calendar and Christmas gift list for family. I'm also loving her green, red, lime and pink color scheme she has here!!




As I said at the start of this post a good planner is the key to a stress free and enjoyable Christmas. If you're the type to leave all your gift buying til the week before Christmas, find your stamped and addressed Christmas cards in your top drawer in the first week of February and think the idea of a full Christmas dinner makes you break a sweat, then a good Christmas planner is the perfect way to achieve an organised, fun Festive season! I hope this post will help you find one that works for you!

Christmas Post - Countdown to Christmas

So now that Halloween is over I can finally look forward to my favourite time of the year... Christmas!!! To celebrate our own family count down and begin our festive season we've made a giant paper chain link.

Last year I found a pack similar to the one pictured at red dot or reject shop or one of those low cost retail stores and we decorated the space around the Christmas tree with long chains but still had heaps of paper strips left over so I put them in the basket with all the paper scraps. Well I pulled them out today. Lexi wrote numbers on them (1-50) while I just stapled them together in sequential order.

Once they were all linked together i just grabbed a push pin from the study and pinned the number '1' link to the ceiling where we normally put the Christmas tree. Each morning at breakfast I allow Lexi to go and rip off the last link of the chain and tell me how many sleeps there are left til Christmas.











Its one of those small, inexpensive ways to help bring the magic of Christmas. As a rule in our house the tree doesn't go up til December 1st, otherwise it would possibly be set up in July ha ha. So to introduce Christmas to our household and to give me a little more than 24 days to be 'Christmassy' I like to do little things to introduce the festive season a little earlier than most homes.

How is your family getting ready for the coming festive season?

Halloween birthday in the Reindl house

We've just finished pulling down all our Halloween decorations so today i'll share our first ever Halloween experience with you all. I've always thought all the American celebrations looked like so much fun so when we were deciding on a theme for Lexi's 6th birthday party i thought it would be the perfect opportunity to go all out.

First step (of course) was to make the invites. i just used some images off a web search, Microsoft word and some clever rhymes to create the design, screen shot and crop the image and then sent the image to a photo printing company to be printed on some gloss paper.

We invited all of Lexi's cousins, some neighbours and a few of her school friends so roughly there was 19 kids. I ended up hiring a couple of kids height trestle tables and some small green and purple plastic chairs from perth kids party hire and then set the tables with orange and black tableware which looked amazing! For the food table i grabbed a trestle table from the garage that the Reindl man had been using as a work bench, taped streamers on the edge to make a table skirt and then put a tablecloth as well as a spooky material scrap.



For decoration I went on a pinning spree and made heaps of things that you can find on my Halloween pintrest board such as some Styrofoam tombstones, paper mache ghost, spider and witch, apocrathy jars, cardboard bats, rope spider webs, mini jack-o-lanterns and my favorite, the body bag!

We had a heap of Halloween themed food also. Vomiting jack-o-lantern guacamole, sponge finger mummys, pumpkin biscuits, zombie poop meringues, pretzel 'bones', 'blood' jelly shots, witchy fairy bread, a gingerbread haunted house, a giant pumpkin cake, monster broth juice with eye balls, chocolate dipped strawberry ghosts, spider web pizza, finger buns, worms, pumpkin poop and graveyard dip.

I created a boardwalk style cut out for the kids to have their photos taken in, we played pin the bow tie on Mr Bones, beanbag relays and musical gargoyles. the kids all had an absolute ball and i finally got to have a big Halloween celebration. With the amount of time, effort and money i put into this party, I don't think we'll be going all out for another party until lexi turns ten haha!