How is your Christmas shopping going? Me, you ask? Well, I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed, but as of last night I’m feeling much more on track. And I got there by following Santa’s example… I made a list {two lists in fact} and I’ll be checking them twice!
My friend Melissa, of Polished Habitat, and I are both big list makers, so we teamed up to create two free printables to help us, and you, stay on track with our holiday shopping, spending, and wrapping.
HOLIDAY SHOPPING & BUDGETING
I’ve been “shopping” for the boys’ for weeks now … but I’ve only purchased a few things. Instead, I’ve been flagging pages in catalogs, saving items to my Amazon wish list, and snapping photos on my iPhone while out running errands.
So basically, I had a lot of ideas… too many in fact. But they were all over the place and I had no idea of where to begin with actually buying. I needed a way to organize all the ideas in one place and determine which fit within our holiday budget.
Fortunately, the shopping list printable that Melissa created came to my rescue! I sat down last night and transferred all the gift ideas to one list, including their prices. Now my overwhelming stack of tabbed catalogs and online wish lists have become one nice and neat, organized list! I’ll definitely be carrying this with me in my purse as I hit up each store!
Ready to get your shopping list organized? Visit Polished Habitat to download her holiday shopping printable that has columns for the recipients, gift ideas, budget, and purchase prices.
GIFT TRACKING
Polished Habitat’s printable will help you organize all your shopping, but what about after you bring all those gift homes and have piles of packages to be wrapped? That’s where my gift tracker printable comes in!
I gave you a sneak peek at my gift tracker a back in October when I turned a thrift store clipboard into a pretty place for me to keep track of the gifts I purchased, and for whom. Feel free to pop over to the post with the tutorial for this shiny happy clipboard {which includes a handy dandy pocket for storing gift receipts}, but be sure to come back to download the gift tracker!
Let’s talk a little more about how I use this printable…
Throughout the year, I am always picking up cute little items that would make good gifts for classmates, friends, and neighbors. I also frequently purchase items for my boys to put away for birthdays and Christmas. I keep all these gifts in the guest room closet along side my gift wrap supplies {be sure to come back next week because I’ll be showing you that closet in all it’s newly organized glory!}. But a closet full of gifts is no good if you can’t remember what you bought and for whom!
That’s where my gift tracker comes in. I make a note of each gift before it goes into the closet, including the intended recipient and occasion.
This list hangs on the wall between the baskets of gifts and my organized gift wrap supplies.
When one of the boys receives an invitation to a birthday party, I can check this list to find a good match before deciding if I need to run to the store to buy anything.
With Christmas sneaking up on us, and Beckett’s fourth birthday just one week later, the gift tracker is about to get its first real workout! And I already know it’s going to help me keep my sanity!
I’ll be using this list to keep track of all the Christmas presents I have bought for the boys, Scott, our parents, and our siblings. It will help be determine which gifts I’ll be giving Beckett for Christmas, and which I’ll be saving for his birthday. And, perhaps most importantly, it will help me ensure that all those gifts actually get wrapped!
It seems that every year on Christmas morning the boys finish unwrapping their gifts and I think “where’s that other toy?”, only to find it still up in the closet. Or another common occurrence is for me to discover a gift tucked back on a shelf that was supposed to have been wrapped and gifted months before. But not this year! Now I can check each gift off as I wrap it to make sure nothing gets overlooked.
