Holiday Plan 2015: Week 2

Week of September 6th:
- Start to buy extra baking ingredients like sugar, butter, flour, etc; this way, you have the necessary ingredients when it is time to start baking AND you do not have to buy it all at once making your wallet hurt a little
- Make two crock pot meals - one to eat this week and one to freeze for a later date; I don't know about all of you, but things get really hectic in the Fall and it is great to have a supply of frozen crock pot meals handy. This week, I am hoping to put together a make ahead Greek chicken recipe!
- Divide some of the gift responsibilities with Christopher; our first year we were married we did not communicate this well and ended up buying triplicate gifts for some people. We love being generous, but we also have to be conscious of our budget
- Discuss with Christopher our holiday traditions and expectations for this year; we use this time to re-cap last years holidays - what went well, what could be improved, etc. We also start talking where we will celebrate each holiday
- Deep cleaning area this week: Living/Family room - after entering our freshly cleaned porch, I want to wow guests with a shiny living room (at least that is the hope!)

Good luck to those following along!

Holiday Plan 2015: Week 1

It is the kick off week to my holiday planning and super checklist. What I tried to do is break down each task into manageable pieces in order to prepare for Halloween (we don't really celebrate, but I do decorate and hand out candy!), Thanksgiving (we host) and Christmas.

I am sharing with you my personal to-do list (or checklist). I created this around our values, schedules and our preferences for each of the holidays. If you want to follow along, please adapt for your families needs. And let me know what you add/subtract from the list - I am always looking for ways to do things more efficiently!

Week of August 30th:
- create and put together my Christmas notebook; nothing to really put in it yet, but I usually designate an old binder for this task
- Draft a gift list with budget; I create a list of everyone who we give gifts to and jot down ideas on what we should give. I also create a budget specifically related to gift giving and try to stick to that as much as possible
- Review my Christmas card list; I have a pre-made Christmas Card address book and organizer (I know - old fashioned) that I review and see if I need to reach out to people who moved, add new friends, etc.
- Start drafting menus for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas
- Create a gifts to make list; I love crafting, so I usually will try to make 2-3 Christmas gifts each year
- After creating a potential menu, jot down long-term grocery shopping items. Most of my menu items are not unique and can be easily found. Some exceptions are ingredients or decorations for my Christmas cookies. It is always good to keep these items in the back of your head when the holiday items start getting put out
- Create a Christmas Cookie list & ingredients; I also throw in any desserts for Halloween and Thanksgiving too
- Order/replace any gift wrap, tape, bags, etc; I make sure I have everything I need on hand before I start wrapping (my least favorite Christmas task)
- Deep clean one area of our house; I think this week I will start with our front porch and entry. I love putting out mums, pumpkins, etc on our steps, so I think this makes the most sense to do first

And there you have it! Week 1 isn't so bad, right? Let me know if you are following along!

Holiday Planning 3.0

So last year I posted just about weekly on holiday plan to get everything done. This worked out so well, especially since we were hosting Thanksgiving and had planned a trip to WDW right before Christmas. I have to say we had very little holiday stress because we prepped and prepared for all of the holidays over 18 weeks.

This year I am going to try and re-share what we are doing in order to prepare for the holidays again. This year we are still hosting Thanksgiving, but we do not have a Disney trip in the works (that could always change...) so we will have more time to get the stuff done!

Follow along with us as we get ready for the 2015 holiday season!

Fun Weekend

This past weekend was so much fun! Friday night I got to visit with the Umstead twins for a little bit. They are such cuties and recently celebrated their 1st birthday! After visiting with them, I got to see one of my other favorite cuties Molly! And BONUS - girls night with Christine. It was so great catching up and watching some chick flicks. Looking forward to our next date.

Then on Saturday Christopher and I drove out to Rochester to visit with the Simm family and finally meet little Emma. We had so much fun too. We celebrated Christmas and Jack's 2nd birthday. He was super excited to play with his new tool bench.

Dennis and Anna are also doing well. It was great to catch up with them too. We are so blessed to have great friends in our life!

Our Disney December Trip - Day 6 (Last Day)

Our last day in the Kingdom :( Christopher made breakfast reservations at the Grand Floridian Cafe for breakfast so he could get in his last steak and eggs there. He is STILL talking about breakfast there and I will have to get on it to make breakfast reservations for our May trip. 

With excellent planning of our trip, we were able to snag Fast Passes to meet Elsa & Anna!!! It was an awesome experience to meet them. They spent a good amount of time with each party and posed for lots of pictures and signed our picture mat.

We also got on some of our favorite rides too - like Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean.

We were sad to go! But we know we will be back in less than 5 months!

Our Disney December Trip - Day 5

Day 5 of our trip, we did a "resort" tour to catch a bunch of the Christmas decorations and exhibits that were up. We decided to take the monorail to Epcot and then walk through Epcot to get to the Crescent Lake resort area. I tried to tempt Christopher with a cronut, but he was being good. 

Our first stop was Beach Club. It was a lovely warm day and by the time we got to the resort area - no jackets were necessary!

Inside the Beach Club, they had many decorated Christmas trees and a lifesize carousel made out of gingerbread! It was even spinning too!

We then walked over to the Yacht Club. This resort also had a lot of Christmas trees decorated, but their centerpiece was a model train village. It was huge and beautiful. This inspired Christopher to set up our train sets when we got home from the trip. 

Then we walked over to the Boardwalk Resort - one of our favorite resorts (and staying here in May!) The poinsettia garden was beautiful! Wish it was warm enough in Buffalo to do this.

Inside the Boardwalk Resort they had a classic stand for some cones! Made out of...you guessed it - Gingerbread!

We then took a bus over to the Magic Kingdom and walked to the Contemporary resort. Their gingerbread exhibit was themed for Frozen. And instead of Hidden Mickeys - they did Hidden Olaf's - how cute!

We then took to the monorail over to the Poly to relax and catch some football. Unfortunately they did not show the Buffalo Bills game. But we still sat at the bar - ordered our Lapu Lapu's and Christopher received play by play updates through his dad, brother Mike, friends and ESPN.

After relaxing and finishing our drinks at the Poly, we headed back to our home resort and grabbed lunch out on the beach/pool area. Christopher was in a good mood, despite missing the Bills game.

We then headed back to our rooms to change for dinner! Our last night, we did dinner at Citricos inside the Grand. Before dinner, we got some more pictures in front of the HUGE tree inside the Grand, did a little last minute shopping and then headed to the lounge for some pre-dinner drinks. 

We relaxed at the lounge and listened to the live band that was playing. It was truly an exception experience and we will definitely be doing that again. (Side note: you are warned - service at the lounge is very slow).

Citricos is our new favorite restaurant! The service is incredible and the food is absolutely out of this world. We ordered a bottle of wine and started with some appetizers. Christopher ordered the arancini and I had the cheese course. For our entrees Christopher had the Swordfish and I had the veal chop. Both were AMAZING and I still think about that meal.

Although we really did not have any room left for dessert, I wanted to get the warm chocolate torte just so I could get the chocolate crown. Our table was near the dessert station and I caught the pastry chefs making the crowns while we were there.

Christopher ordered the gelato sampler - and it was so cute. They served it in three mini ice cream cones in this cute stand.

We then ran down to the dock after dinner (more like waddled) to catch Wishes over Magic Kingdom. It was so romantic and a great way to end our Christmas vacation at Disney. 

Our Disney December Trip - Day 4

The BIG Kahuna

AND KONA COFFEE (all CAPS because I am so excited seeing this food)

TONGA TOAST

Day 4. We started the day off with a hearty breakfast at the Polynesian Resort's Kona Cafe. I had the Tonga Toast and Christopher ordered the huge breakfast platter. We then relaxed for a bit and headed over to Hollywood Studios in the afternoon.

Gorgeous sunny day at the Grand

Like all of the other resorts and park, this one was decorated for Christmas too.

We rode Star Tours, Toy Story Midway Mania and even caught an Indiana Jones show.

We decided to have a snack before heading over to the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights and picked Min & Bills Diner. Neither of us had eaten here before and there choices sounded delicous.

We split a Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese and a Pretzel hot dog. Both were delicious.

Christopher, who isn't even a cheese fan like me, still talks about the mac & cheese! I should add that to the recipe list!

We found a good spot to wait for the show to start. And little did we know how great our spot was - it was right in front of the light switch! It was really cool to watch the selected family flip the switch and turn on all of the lights!

Although I posted some pictures here, none of them really do the show justice.

What happens in the show, is the lights will twinkle and dance for special, selected Christmas songs and then once the song is over, the lights will not flash/twinkle/dance. It is truly a spectacle to see.

After the show, we left Hollywood Studios and headed to Downtown Disney for shopping, walking around and to grab a late dinner. All the shops were decked out for Christmas too. We got to go into the new Disney Marketplace Co-op and Christopher has special cigars rolled for him at Sosa's.

We sat down and had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Express. It was a great way to relax and unwind.