Merry Christmas! *photo heavy*

I’m sure you all can agree that it’s been a busy holiday season. At first I was excited about Christmas being on a Sunday… but now it just seems really inconvenient as far as trying to get everything ready by a Friday.

I tried to give myself a break this year and not beat myself up about doing everything that I wanted to, and one of those things that did not get done was our Christmas card. We just never had a good time to get pictures done, and ended up having my friend Gennifer take them on the fly. There was still time to get them printed and sent, but with our travel schedule, it did just not work out… so our card this year is an e-card delivered via my blog, facebook, and email. So really we are just super “green” right? So in lieu of a card in the mail, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The decorating mostly got done – I couldn’t slack on this since its our first year in the house and I was excited to see how my existing decorations fit the new house. I still need a bit of filler since the house is so much bigger than our apartment, but I can pick some of that up on clearance on Monday! Here are a few snapshots that I took of our decorations this year:

(the iphone 4s takes THE BEST night-time christmas tree photos)

I saw the ruffled tree skirt tutorial that was floating around pinterest. I got everything ready and started to glue all of those ruffles, but only made it a few inches and decided it would be MUCH MUCH easier to just sew the ruffles on (actually my mom was visiting and she sewed them on for me – which is why this is even finished BEFORE Christmas). And trust me, if you do this, SEW the dang ruffles on, you will save your fingers and yourself from going crazy.

I totally need two more cream stockings from pottery barn! And extra points for anyone who spots the baby!

One other exciting thing that happened this week was that our back splash tile went in the kitchen! It looks amazing and I’ll share it very soon!

I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing holiday weekend!

Motivated Mondays – Christmas edition! *Free Downloads

Okay so I know Christmas is less than a week away, but I am so behind so this is still going to work for me!  But even if you’re Christmas is all done and organized you can remember this for next year.

So I created a checklist with 5 major columns, and under each of those columns are a bunch of check-boxes for different activities, parties, gifts etc that you need to schedule, accomplish, shop for etc. This is a great over-view type of document that you can use to schedule all your various Christmas happenings. Since everyone’s Christmas activities are so vastly different, I made this form an EDITABLE PDF file. You can’t change the categories ( I should have done that too, but it’s too late now!) but you can change all the existing checkbox text as well as add text to all of the existing checkboxes. And you can save the file and reprint next Christmas so you have a good idea of all the things you need to do for Christmas.

Click on the images below to begin download of PDF file

And since Christmas is a week away, I created a simple Christmas Countdown with 7 days leading up to Christmas. This one will have to be printed out to be filled in, but you can quickly write up all the things you need to get done this week… like STARTING TO SHOP for Christmas gifts… or is that just me??

Click on the image below to begin download of PDF file

Click on the images above to download a PDF version of my printable Christmas Checklist and Countdown forms. The downloadable PDFs in this article (and across my entire site) are free for personal use only. If you would like to blog about this free download, please accompany and images from my site with a credit and link back to this article. As a courtesy please do not link directly to a downloadable file but rather to this page. At this time, no customizations of this or any of my forms are available. Forms are a free download AS IS. Also since you’ve made it this far, please subscribe to my RSS feed and facebook page so you can find me again! And don’t forget to tell your friends

Motivated Monday – Neighbor Gift List *Free Download

Okay so I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Motivated Monday… I have just been so swamped with work stuff. But I finally finished the majillion projects I was working on and can get other stuff done – like updating my blog and creating free organizational printables!

This week I have “neighbor gifts” on the brain. I’m not sure if this is a regional thing or everywhere, but we like to give home-made gifts to our close friends and neighbors. Last year I made 16 round pans of cinnamon rolls, this year we are making Jamaican Christmas cake.

Anyway this printable helps you organize any gifts you are making/buying. You can also list all people you are delivering gifts to, as well as whom you have received gifts from — not so that you can revel in all your loot – but so you can reciprocate with a gift or a thank you card etc.

This printable works for office gifts, teacher gifts, extended family gifts and more! If you are looking for a more custom gift list, check out my gift organizer.

(Click on the image to begin PDF download)

Click on the form image above to download a PDF version of my printable neighbor-gift form. The downloadable PDF in this article (and across my entire site) are free for personal use only. If you would like to blog about this free download, please accompany and images from my site with a credit and link back to this article. As a courtesy please do not link directly to a downloadable file but rather to this page. At this time, no customizations of this or any of my forms are available. Forms are a free download AS IS, no customization or changes can be made.

The Holiday Planner – How will you use it? *Free Download

I will use my Holiday Planner to keep myself organized this Holiday season. I have big plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving dinner will be served at our house this year. So I will be including a shopping list and menu. I will also start collecting any recipes I think I might want to use. This way I can find it all in one place and have them available when I am shopping. How will you use your planner?

Here is a Free Downloadable Shopping List + Menu from Jen Allyson for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and general Holiday that you can put in your Holiday Planner.

Click on the images below to download the PDF files.

Before I can get too excited about the menu, here at the Lake house we are starting a new project…. We need a new wall oven. This means we get to pull out the old one, demo some sheet rock and cut a new hole. After 23 years, wall ovens have changed in size. Lucky for me, Jen posted the most wonderful Project Master List and Project Notes for free download.

And when that new oven is installed, here is a fall family favorite recipe my Grandma Norma always made for us kids.

Too Cute for Words! Freebie by Deena Rutter.

I was visiting my friend Deena’s Blog and she has the CUTEST Christmas card posted. Not only is it posted, its a freebie! So you can go download it, add your own photo, customize the text, and then voila! you’re own cutest Christmas card!

Go check out Deena’s blog to get the download link.