A Joyful Christmas Season: Setting Goals for December 2016

Setting goals for December 2016 to create a joyful Christmas season.

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Christmas is my favorite time of year. It’s a good thing, because my children have been playing Christmas songs in our home since July. They’ve probably been working on presents since then, too. They had, at one point, 100 handmade presents under our tree. Then they opened some of them. There are still quite a few tiny packages sitting under the tree.

The thing is, they started making presents in July because I started buying presents in July. I think this comes from the summers when I was 12 and 13. We were living in Bolivia, and at that time it was really hard to find the types of gifts my parents wanted in Bolivia. We had summer home leaves, and they would buy all of their Christmas presents in the United States. I was really into helping with the Christmas shopping during those two summers. Ever since, July arrives and my internal clock says, “Time to buy Christmas presents!”

The beauty of this is that, by the time December rolls around, any Christmas preparations have been finished for weeks, if not months, so we can sit back and relax.

Setting December Goals for a Joyful Christmas Season

I LOVE advent calendars, because they make Christmas a month-long event instead of a single day of celebrating. Making this advent calendar was one of my November goals. I got it done! We are filling the pockets with our Sing Your Way to Christmas songs. I got the panel at a (sadly now closed) local quilt shop, but there are some other cute advent calendar panels online. My sister-in-law came over and got me started, or I don’t think it ever would have happened. She also gave me the courage to try making my own binding, and got me to look up how to sew it on properly. Things like that turn into HUGE obstacles in my head. I’m glad I’ve finally conquered that one. I didn’t get anything done on Lily’s quilt top, so that is going to be a goal for December.

We had a lot of great weather, and the kids LOVED riding their bikes. We got some much-needed rain – mostly at night, which is beautifully convenient. We had five of Mike’s students over for Thanksgiving dinner, and the kids and I enjoyed making these easy gratitude trees. My friend Maggy of Red Ted Art released an ornaments ebook, which my kids used to make the little orange ornaments (we used cuties, actually) in the photo at the top of this post.

Setting Goals for December 2016

Here are my goals for December 2016:

• Finish Lily’s quilt top. Focus on learning.
• Celebrate Johnny’s birthday. Focus on gratitude.
• Help the kids identify and take advantage of service opportunities. Focus on gratitude
• Sing lots of carols around our Christmas tree. Focus on mindful living.

That’s it for us! I have a few blog friends who join me in setting goals every month. Here are the ones that are live so far:

• To a Month of Just Enjoying: December 2016 Monthly Goals with Printables from 3 Dinosaurs

What are your goals for the final month of 2016?

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MaryAnne Kochenderfer

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MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.