2020 - HHP - Week 18 - New Year's Week

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Holiday_Mom

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Merry Christmas! I hope you had a nice day of celebrating even though it may have looked different from last year.

This is the last week of HHP 2020.


What's on your list?
 
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Holiday_Mom

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We had an eventful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We had about 1.5 inches of rain in an hour or so. We had to take an alternate route back home after the Christmas Eve Vigil.11 pm on Christmas Eve, our basement was flooding. Our area was getting pummeled with rain. Dh was up until 2:30 am dealing with the flood waters. I was helping Santa until 1 am when I just couldn't keep my eye open anymore.

We had a good start to our Christmas morning with some Eggnog lattes when we lost power for 4 hours. There were over 58,000 homes without power due to the storm that came through on Christmas Eve. Our day ended with a nice dinner with the family. It was the first time in 18 years where we weren't off rushing to someone's house for Christmas. The last time we stayed home for Christmas was due to a snow storm.

This is going to be the quietest Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve week I've had in ages. I have a video call scheduled with a friend on Monday. Tuesday we are going to have an outdoor visit with my mom. Wednesday we are planning to hike a part of the Appalachian Trail. The rest of the time I want to work on setting up goals for 2021 and tying it into my 2021 Word of the Year.

Household Checklist

  • Keep up with general cleaning.

Holiday Prep Checklist

  • Review dinner menu for New Year's Eve and make sure to buy items.
  • Think about goals to work towards for 2021 and write them down
  • Look at the return addresses from Christmas cards received in the last week and see if there are any new addresses.
  • Make a list of what worked/didn't work.
  • Note when HHP 2021 starts on the calendar!
 
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Myron's Mom

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We got rain early in the day Christmas Eve and then about 1 it changed to snow. How awful you had to deal with flooding for Christmas. Except for slowing my son down a little we were fine and it was beautiful.
Our Christmas was just as it has been, thankfully, just the 3 of us. There was the anxiety of wondering if any of us would be sick and if we would have everything but it turned out fine
I have a short shopping list for New Year’s Eve. It will be just the 2 of us. The prime rib I bought for plan B for Christmas will be our dinner.
Once I buy a planner for 2021 ( tomorrow) I’ll start filling it in. Birthdays, events etc. I have notes for next Christmas I need to add also.
The trees will come down close to mid January.
How did it get to be New Years already?? The time has flown by
 

happy2bme

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My Happy Place
Household Checklist:
  • minimum maintenance - done
Holiday Prep Checklist:
  • plan New Year's Eve menu - done
  • set up 2021 calendars - done
  • holiday debriefing - done
  • take down and store decorations - done
 
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Minta

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The rain/wind storm that blew threw Christmas EVe night knocked down half of outside decorations. One set of lights is not working.

We are planning on spending NYE home with same extended family we spent Christmas eve with although part of me just wants a quite evening home. I will be making pepperoni bread, pigs in a blanket, meatball sandwiches, chips and dips.

We will be taking down the inside decorations either NYE or NYD and set out the winter snowmen decor. The outside decorations will come down Saturday and the white winter lights and the snowman will go up.
 

Cindylouwho

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Happy Holidays -- all is finally quiet here. DH and I had to race to get a rental home on the market and race to finish year-end accounting. Then Christmas Week was then a race to get in all the baking and Christmas Light tours that I promised the kids. Then the dog got sick (of course). She's fine now. Busy Busy Busy. But now it is quiet. We have been super lazy over the weekend and it has been wonderful! The house now looks like a bomb went off so today will gather the kids and we'll hit it in 15 minute increments over the coming week. One of the things I'm super excited about later in January is opening up every drawer I have in the house and throwing stuff away! :). But not today. Today we are going to continue eating cookies and playing boardgames. But I AM going to get some quick cardio in. Cuz, wow. And I don't plan to put down my cheeses and cookies for another week! :).

Pondering our plan for New Years. Teens plan NOT to gather, so this will be the first time we've had them home in a few years.

Tree won't come down til a week into the New Year, but the excess decor comes down as we clean up the Christmas mess. We do the same thing Minta, the winter decor takes its place with snowmen etc.

As always, I had a few Christmas epiphanies that I'll share over in whichever Christmas Epiphany thread we have running this year.

Enjoy the quiet. Warm wishes to you all.
 

Holiday_Mom

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I shared what worked and didn't work on another thread but I've come up with more things since then. I'm posting it here for next year.

What worked with Christmas Prep in 2020?
  • Ordering early
  • Keeping an Amazon Wish list for others as I came across interesting ideas.
  • Listening to conversations and anticipating needs
  • Working ahead of time
  • Patience and grace towards myself.
  • Having Christmas tea/coffee and a treat while wrapping
  • Listening to Christmas shows/podcasts while wrapping
  • Having a sense of humor (I had funny activities for the Christmas Photo Scavenger Hunt. The pictures are priceless and make me laugh.)
  • Trying to do what we could to make it feel like Christmas: send out Christmas cards, tree cutting, decorating the house inside and out; baking Christmas cookies; delivering cookies to friends and family; Photo Scavenger Hunt; serving our favorite Christmas foods and drinks
  • Freezing cookies for the day we put up the tree and decorated it. We had enough in the freezer for an undecorating the tree "party" and one for the day we took the lights off the tree and took the tree to the curb. I'd like to label the freezer bags next year for those three events. It made post the Christmas blues easier on me.

What didn’t work with Christmas Prep in 2020?
  • I didn’t anticipate the level of difficulty it would be to keep up with wrapping in a small area the entire season. I typically have the house to myself a few hours a week to get the wrapping done in a large area. This year was impossible with the quarantine and everyone home from college in November and December.
  • Ordering almost everything online was a real hassle to track for deliveries. They came in multiple packages over multiple weeks. I keep a spreadsheet of everything ordered and color coded them when they arrived and when they were wrapped. I am hoping that the in store stock is better next year.
  • Waiting to buy what I wanted at Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree meant that I never was able to find it the next time I went there. Next year, if I see something that I like and feel like I can’t live without it if it isn’t there the next time, I will buy it then and there. Because of the quarantine and other things happening at home, I didn’t get a chance to get out shopping at the stores from Halloween until the day before Thanksgiving. By that point, almost everything was sold out in the Christmas section. The Christmas items that I had seen on Halloween and planned on buying later were gone by Thanksgiving.
 
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sweetpumkinpye

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One of the things I'm super excited about later in January is opening up every drawer I have in the house and throwing stuff away! :).
This seems like heaven to me. DH and I are now empty nesters with a few unused bedrooms. I am going to go through every drawer and cupboard and organise them the way I want. It will certainly keep me busy.
 

sweetpumkinpye

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Next year, if I see something that I like and feel like I can’t live without it if it isn’t there the next time, I will buy it then and there.
Mary, we have noticed the last few years but even more so this year that the stores seem to be ordering a minimum of items. There was hardly any wrapping paper here this year, and not a great selection of Christmas cards. If I really wanted something I picked it up when I saw it as there was no guarantee that it would be there later. The supermarkets and dollar stores that I went to had most of their shelves empty or very picked over by early December and I have seen nothing in the stores since Christmas.
 

AnnieClaus

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Holiday_Mom- I like your spreadsheet idea for keeping track of what was ordered and what had come in.
I got confused this year remembering what I had ordered and did it actually get here.
I had boxes piling up and thought, "I better start opening them, what if I'm missing stuff for someone."
I will incorporate your method in 2021.

Annie
 

sweetpumkinpye

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Holiday_Mom- I like your spreadsheet idea for keeping track of what was ordered and what had come in.
I got confused this year remembering what I had ordered and did it actually get here.
I had boxes piling up and thought, "I better start opening them, what if I'm missing stuff for someone."
I will incorporate your method in 2021.
Annie, I think that I will be doing more online shopping this year too. I have already placed 3 or 4 online orders and am loosing track of what I have ordered. I think Mary's spreadsheet idea is a great one.
 
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