"Making Christmas" (of a Sort)

All of our kids and their families are coming for Christmas this year, and so despite the fact that Christmas is seven weeks away, I started preparing yesterday.

Staying organized is crucial for large family gatherings and I have a notebook that I use to help me with that.

Actually, it's a series of notebooks - when I fill one up, I order another.

The annual Christmas sections tend to be lengthy. (Not really a surprise given the size of our family.)

Each family gets their own page and that's where I record what we are giving them, track spending (I try to spend about the same amount on each person), and include their pets so that I remember to give them a treat or something. (One year I made catnip mice for all the families' cats - they were a big hit! Er, at least they were with the cats.)

My Christmas preparations also include a family tradition that actually happens at Thanksgiving - I give each family member a Christmas ornament so it can be hung on their Christmas tree that year. And with Thanksgiving just a little more than three weeks away, I need to get busy.

Yesterday I started making a list of who would get what ornament this year. 

I start with the grands (adding in Jayci since she and JC got married this year) and then have a list for my kids and their spouses, and then a third for my siblings and their spouses and kids. (Actually, there is a fourth for close friends, too.)

Last year I embroidered gingerbread ornaments for everyone.

I love these so much - they really do look like gingerbread cookies!

This year everyone is getting a blackened beeswax ornament. I need 48 ornaments so the pouring I'd planned to do later this week is going to be a bigger project than I'd anticipated. I had to order another 5 pound bag of triple cleaned beeswax pellets as I only have a pound on hand and that won't be enough.

Later this morning I am going to begin sorting the beeswax ornaments I have on hand so I can make a list of what I actually still need to make. That will lessen the number a bit but not by much. Between the Feast and then blog readers who bought ornaments, I don't have a lot left and so I've got some work to do.

But that's okay - I enjoy "Making Christmas." That song ran repeatedly through my mind while I was putting together this year's Christmas section in my notebook. Enjoy Pentatonix's version!

50 days until Christmas! (And 23 until Thanksgiving - yikes!!)