1. Welcome to all the new members.

2. I just changed the schedule in the sidebar from 2007 to 2008

3. I want to thank our cookie and craft managers for the work they're doing on organizing sharing of cookie and craft posts for the group. If you haven't signed up yet, please consider making their job easier by visiting the cookie post schedule and the craft post schedule and signing up to post.

4. I wanted to talk about how this community is going to run this year, so you have an idea what's coming.

In the past, we have found the program, and especially the "deep cleaning" aspect, a bit overwhelming. I want everyone to know that it is OK to skip things and to do this program halfway. Anything you do is going to make things better for you, and if you continue to do the program, you will probably find that it gets a little easier every year. (Below, however, I'm going to talk about expectations and "the perfect Christmas".) Anyway, I want everyone to do what they can, don't get discouraged if you don't get everything done, and don't give up. The whole point of this is LESS STRESS for the holidays.

I post the whole list of stuff to do on Sunday as a reminder to the group. This year I am going to try to break down that big list (sometimes the cleaning section is quite long) into daily tasks that will hopefully make it more manageable and less overwhelming, and make us feel more like doing only part of the list is better than doing nothing. So I will be posting the overviews on Sunday, along with a Sneak Peek of how I'm breaking down the tasks for the week so that you'll be able to plan in case the way your week shakes out as far as time to put into stuff is different from mine--as it surely will be. You'll be able to say- Ok, I have class on Wednesday night and never have time, but I can move Wednesday's tasks to Monday when I have the afternoon free.

Then I will make a post every day of the week with the daily tasks for cleaning and holiday prep. Especially on the holiday prep, your schedule WILL VARY so plan accordingly. For some of you, especially those who run errands or do cooking stuff on Sundays, it may make more sense to put off this week's errands or cooking chores until the next week.

Feel free to comment to any of my posts. I enjoy knowing that someone is out there reading. I will probably not reply to all comments, but I read every one. Cheer each other on the comments. Take it upon yourself to be the back-patter.

(I've still got at least 15 hours worth of work ahead of me on this project. If you have feedback once we get started, please feel free to give it. And if I miss a week and you have to get your to-dos directly from the site, please forgive me. I'm going to do my best.)

5. Every Saturday there will be a Check-in post where you can tell us how you did. It's a nice time for everyone to get together and compare notes, talk up our accomplishments, and/or confess. If you'd like to create your own post to tell the long version of what happened with your holiday plans that week, feel free to do that as well.

6. Please remember that anything you do and any way or any time you choose to do it is OK. If it makes sense to do something in the program that doesn't come up for a few weeks, go ahead. There's no reason you have to wait to be told to do things if they come up sooner. You won't mess anything up. If it makes more sense for you to start with cleaning your pantry for whatever reason, do it, and work on your porch during pantry week. Or whatever. It's your home and your Christmas.

7. Do not expect to do this whole program perfectly or to achieve the perfect Christmas. Do not expect other people in your household to jump on the band wagon with you and help you out, and do not expect your extended family to be willing or able to discuss Christmas plans with you. Just try and then shrug it off if they shriek about not being ready to talk about Christmas before Halloween.

Last year I wrote a post on expectations which you can find here.

Ok, I don't think this post was as upbeat as it should have been. There seem to be a lot of cautions and such. I really do think we're going to have the best year yet, and I'm really quite positive about it. I'm really looking forward to working with you all this year and I hope we have a really active group and a great holiday season! See you on Sunday.

I apologize for not being great about a)posting over the holidays, and b) the whole thing this year, really.

I hope everyone's holidays went well, that you're all recovered, and that most of the stuff is put away now and things are getting back to normal.

I had a few questions, like:
What do you want to do for the rest of the year? Do you want to talk about other holidays? Do you just want reminders that they're coming up, or do you want to try to do stuff or work on planning together as a group? If so, what holidays are you interested in talking about?

Do you have any suggestions for this year's HGP? Any suggestions are welcome, but I was primarily thinking about things you'd like to see within the group, like the kinds of posts or reminders you'd like, projects we might plan, etc.

Do any of these things interest you?
A goal for sharing cards: A day to shoot for when we would have our Christmas cards purchased or made and could share pics with the group

Ornament/Craft of the Month: Several members volunteer to post tutorials of simple projects for ornaments, other decorations, or gifts to work on each month. Could help those of us with goals for inexpensive decorating, handmade gifts, or Christmas craft sales.

Cookie of the Week: Several members volunteer to share a cookie recipe each week in the few months before the holidays and we work on spreading the holiday baking out over several weekends, or just find new recipes we enjoy.

Anything else you can think of?

I thought it might not be a bad idea to write a post on expectations.

For many of us at holidayplanning, last year was our first experience with the Holiday Grand Plan, and we didn't know what to expect. The logic was there, that if we spread our holiday preparations out over 18 weeks, surely we would have a practically stress-free Christmas (interactions with certain family members excepted, of course). And because we were starting so early we would be able to do so much more! And to some extent, that was true. But I think some of us had a rather rude awakening and there were some disappointments. So I just wanted to talk a bit about the plan in general and what to expect before we really get going.

The Plan can essentially be divided into two components: Deep Cleaning and Holiday Preparation. Almost every week we go through and clean a different room of our homes. And it is a serious cleaning thing. It's a dump out the drawers, go through junk you haven't even seen in years, wash walls, launder draperies thorough, inside-out turning of your home. If you are able to do this, you'll have an amazingly clean, decluttered, and organized home for the New Year. Doesn't that sound great?

Yeah. Sure does. The thing is, while I really believe that there are people who really want it and can make it happen, I think there were a bunch of us who had trouble keeping up with the cleaning schedule last year. I don't want to discourage anyone from trying to turn things around in their housekeeping lives in the next 18 weeks. More power to you. My personal philosophy about this stuff, heavily influenced by flylady of course, is that real change in housekeeping is just like weight loss. For a lot of people it is just not going to happen in 18 weeks. So if you find that you're not able to keep up with the cleaning schedule, that you're not able to do everything, relax. Anything you manage to do is a good thing, and it's ok if your home isn't "perfect" this Christmas. It's going to get better every year and so will you.

The same thing can happen with the holilday preparations. Starting this early you start to imagine that you'll be able to bake cookies you never baked before, make homemade gifts using skills you haven't even learned yet, make 75 individualized, hand-made Christmas cards and have them in the mail the day after Thanksgiving. And it's great to plan these things and try to do them. But it is not great to beat yourself up because life happened and things didn't work out the way you planned.

Committing to something isn't the same as accomplishing it. If you didn't accomplish your ultimate goal, that doesn't make you a failure. If you fall behind or are unable to accomplish some intermediate goal, it doesn't mean you have to give up and chuck the whole program. Concentrate on what you did do, what things were better this year than they have been in other years, and realize that next year you may not have the "perfect" holiday, but you'll probably be able to do just a little bit more.

Another problem with expectations that we may encounter in the coming weeks is the concept of help and the involvement of other people. Some of us are going to want our families to help us out with stuff and some of the tasks outlined in the HGP are going to call for interacting with other people to make plans and set dates and places for holiday get-togethers. Be prepared for resistance. I'm sure I don't know why, but for some people, the idea of discussing Christmas before Thanksgiving is horrifying. Just do the best you can, and come over here and gripe if you need to.

Which brings me to gripes. The holidays are supposed to be happy and that's why we're here. And, in general, we all like to come here and be upbeat and happy happy with the holiday joy joy. But it's not all fun and games, and if you're stuck on something, if you've got family giving you a hard time, or you're having trouble keeping up with cleaning, or you've got some other challenge to following the plan, chances are that someone around here is having the same experience. Feel free to post your rant here where we really understand what you're going through, if you think that will make you feel better. I'm pretty sure we've even got a tag around here for "gripes".

Ok, I think I've come to the end of this speech. I'd love to have those who have followed the plan before comment about their experience in past years, what you were and were not able to accomplish, and your hopes and expectations for this year.

I report that I did very little. I got wrapped up in some personal projects in the weeks before, so I didn't do as much as I wanted to. I did make cookies, which were good, I did make a nice dinner. I didn't get my fortune cookie in the take-out container thing done, nor did I get a dress made for dd.

No plans for St. Patrick's Day.

On the Christmas stuff, I'm still saving $20 a week and that's going really well. So even if I don't get other stuff made for gifts, at least I'll have some money to buy some. I've started checking Etsy on a regular basis for unique gifts, though I haven't found anything yet.

On another Christmas prep note, this past year I wanted to make a calendar for my parents featuring pictures of my daughter. But at that time of year, it seemed overwhelming to slog through all my pictures and try to pick out the right ones. This year I'm choosing one picture a month so that by mid-December the calendar should be ready to print and one gift will be DONE.

Easter is on April 8 this year. This is about the time I start wondering about that.