Today I am blatantly copying Kae and her 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. Starting on Wednesday the 13th, she has a challenge for each of the remaining 12 days until Christmas- read a Christmas book, go for a walk to look at lights, eat a family dinner at the table, etc.
I love the idea of assigning an activity to make each day distinctive. The days in December always seem to fly by. This seems like a way to slow it down and feel like each day is important (not just a stepping stone to December 25th.) Here’s my own 12 Days of Christmas list:
Wednesday 12/13- I didn’t read about Kae’s challenge until Thursday, but luckily Wednesday WAS a special day anyway- it was my “elfing” day! I opened and organized all the Amazon packages that had been shoved in my closet, and wrapped presents. I really enjoyed it! And I got a lot done.
Thursday 12/14- Honestly, this day and Friday were hard to fit into the challenge. There are just so many things I have to get done, and I’m trying to reframe it. We can call this “elfing day junior”- when I got home from work I discovered four more gifts had arrived, so I had a mini-wrapping session (my daughter was at school late for a rehearsal.) I also finished up my Amazon orders.
In the last post I asked for stocking stuffer ideas for my son, and I was amused to notice that almost EVERYONE mentioned socks. Okay you guys, socks have been ordered!
Friday 12/15- Decorating my son’s room. Finishing the outdoor lights. Once again, these are more “tasks” than fun challenges, but I need one more “Christmas work day” and this is it!
Saturday 12/16- Very special day- my son comes home!!! Family dinner at the table with festive decorations and twinkle lights.
Sunday 12/17- Cookie baking! I’m thinking of making these rum balls from Sally’s Baking Addiction. These will be part of the gifts to my daughter’s flute and guitar teachers, and I think they’ll appreciate an “adult” cookie. I’ll also make another kind of cookie- not sure what yet, but something my kids will like.
Monday 12/18- Starting the family puzzle! Ha ha, we’ll see how this goes. I decided we’re all going to do a puzzle this Christmas, so I ordered this one:
My daughter has announced that it’s the “dumbest thing ever” but my son is humoring me so far. I’m looking forward to it!
Tuesday 12/19- More cookie baking! I’ll make the dough for gingerbread men and sugar cookies, which we decorate on Christmas Eve. Plus one more cookie- probably biscotti- to add to gifts.
Wednesday 12/20- Long run!!! I’m going to make a Christmas playlist for this run. Just for part of it- this is a planned 24 mile run and even I can’t listen to Christmas music for THAT long.
Thursday 12/21- Present wrapping and Christmas movies with the kids. They’ll wrap the gifts they got for each other, and the gifts they’re giving us. Also any miscellaneous presents will be wrapped, like my Secret Santa present for work.
Friday 12/22- My son will be going out with friends this night, so I’m going to try to watch a Christmas movie I’ve never seen before. Elf? (I know- I’m the only one in the world who hasn’t seen this.) White Christmas? Love Actually? If I can get my husband or daughter interested, it will definitely have a bearing on my choice.
Saturday 12/23- Festivus! I’ll work in the morning and then we’ll do our usual Festivus activities, which include going out for bagels, last minute shopping and present wrapping, and watching Polar Express. We’ll do a little airing of the grievances, but otherwise our Festivus doesn’t follow the Costanza’s traditions (the bagel lunch is a nod to Kramer’s job at H&H in that episode, ha ha.)
Sunday 12/24- Every year on Christmas Eve we host a cookie decorating party and dinner for my friend and her two daughters. We met when our kids were in preschool together, and we’ve been spending Christmas Even together for eleven years now.
There we go! Did anyone else copy Kae? What activities are you doing in the next ten days?
Header photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
27 Responses
I love your cookies!! My friends and I used to get together and do cookies every year and I used to do cutouts and let the kids decorate and we had some good ones. However, I got lazy and tired of making the cutouts, which often broke, and the frosting, which was fun but a lot of work and clean up! So now we just make balls! Haha, just kidding, our standbys are peppermint chocolate chips, sugar cookies, and snickerdoodles. I also love what my grandma calls Russian Kisses, but I think other people call them Mexican Wedding Cakes. Whatever they are called, they are just flour, sugar and butter essentially!
I am loosely following Kae’s 12 days; I will do 12 things but not on certain days… I have met up with a few friends already and have plans to do more, will definitely look at lights, and have my parents coming over this weekend for dinner (and we will probably do a light peep). There will be good times had! Have fun with your son!
Thank you Kyria! There are already some glitches in my plans, so I can see how it might not be possible to stick to the exact days for everything. I’ll try though. I agree that decorating the sugar cookies is SOOOO messy. It’s definitely better now that the kids are older, but it’s still a messy, sticky situation.
I love this plan! The way that I feel about “copying” great blogger ideas is that the whole reason that we write is to share stuff like this, so when someone posts something good of course I’m going to try it out!
I’m so excited for tomorrow for you when you’ll have the whole family back together!!! I love the puzzle. I also had my eye on those rum balls. We have a smaller group for the holidays this year so I don’t want to make too many things but surely there is room for rum balls on the cookie tray.
I’ve never seen Elf either. The hubs is talking about it. Will Ferrell is hit or miss for us so we’ll see. For your playlist, I don’t know how many Christmas songs you have, but it would be fun to space them out so that you’d have one Christmas song for each mile.
Oooh! Brilliant idea for the playlist! I might do that instead of all Christmas.
The good thing about those rum balls is they look really easy! I also already have all the ingredients, except that my rum isn’t “spiced.” I wonder if I should add some spices to the cookies? I’ll have to google this.
My daughter has announced that it’s the “dumbest thing ever” – JENNY, THIS IS MY LIFE NOW. It is like I am literally the most stupid person on the planet, with the worst ideas ever, and how dare I have the audacity to live in her house (my daughter is 12, going on 13, going on FORTY-FIVE). SIGH. But I love the puzzle and I love Kae’s idea (not doing it myself, but think it is one of the most fun ideas ever.
I’m so excited for your son to come home. Yay.
You know how I feel about White Christmas. Love, love, love! But I can see it being hit-and-miss. Elf is likely the most generally likeable movie in that list, but if you don’t like Will Ferrell and potty humour, I’d steer clear – haha. I used to enjoy Love Actually, but find it pretty icky now. Some of the story lines are just really creepy and gross to me now as an adult (emotional infidelity, weird unrequited love)…but it is a fav for many!
Okay, that’s good advice on the movies. I can see how all three of them could be great IF YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT MOOD. I’ll keep that in mind while I’m watching.
I think you and my husband need to form a support group for parents of teenage girls. My daughter can be pretty snarky to me, but my husband really bears the brunt of it. Does Abby get along better with John? I’m wondering if it’s typical to have a good parent/bad parent situation. SIGH.
I love the palm tree lights — it’s such a warm climate way to decorate for Christmas! Some people here actually put lights on their cactus, which is impressive since I don’t know how they don’t get poked!
Your plans for the next 12 days sound so festive! I love that you celebrate Festivus haha, I always have to watch that Seinfeld episode on the 23rd. My “plans” are to get through the next 5 days of work and then the festivities can really begin for me on the 22nd, including wrapping ALL the presents!
Palm trees actually have prickly thorns and it’s really hard to get the lights on- so I really can’t imagine getting lights on a cactus!!! I’m actually laughing just thinking about it. I’m picturing ending up with two bloody hands.
I will probably have the last round of presents to wrap on the 22nd, sigh! Christmas falls on a good day this year, Monday. So most people at LEAST will have a three day weekend!
Palm tree lights! How cool is that. It’s so exotic!
You’ve never seen Elf! If you watch it I hope you love it. It’s a Christmas tradition around here.
I love all your cookie decorating traditions! We are doing gingerbread today.
I seem to remember your sons’ creative gingerbread man decorations!
I think if my daughter joins me, we’ll probably watch Elf. If it’s my husband I’m thinking it’ll be Love Actually. We’ll see!
I love this idea! I do not want to implement it! Are you going to do a daily update like Kae to tell us how your challenge is going? (Please say yes!)
I think what I might do is just focus on doing *something* in the holiday spirit each day, but I don’t have the bandwidth to plan it ahead of time. Tonight we’re going to the lights at the zoo, so that’s exciting right?!
Yes, that is exciting! Doing “something” every day might be the way to go- I’ve already had to modify my plans for tomorrow. I probably won’t do daily updates, but maybe I’ll have a couple extra posts with updates for several days at a time.
fun idea… just working and running LOL with a few parties in the mix. My hubby has pneumonia and my cat is awol… puts a dampers on my holiday spirit
NOOO! Your cat is still gone? And I hope your husband is okay! It seems like people are getting REALLY sick this year- (stay healthy.) Yes, I can see how these things would put a damper on your holiday mood.
I didn’t know about the challenge but I love this! We are still fighting back from Covid, so my holiday cheer is a little weak at the moment.
I did get the tree decorated and some presents wrapped. We went out for holiday cocktails twice and are doing it again (I’m a sucker for a Christmas pop up bar. We went downtown for some of the lights, and I hope we can go see more. Sunday I am baking cookies. And we are doing a lights boat tour next week!
Ha, I like how you say your holiday cheer is weak and then rattle off a list of really fun sounding events! But you’re always doing cool things like that. I hope you’re back to 100% soon.
What a fun Christmas Eve tradition! I also love that you celebrate Festivus. I have not done ANY holiday activities and I don’t think it’s going to happen. But that’s okay, we can aim higher next year.
I’ll have to read your “Christmas check in post” for details on this! I can see how moving and everything that goes with it would make it hard to do Christmas really big. Well, Christmas comes around every year- you can always do more next year if you want to.
What a festive lead up to Christmas! I feel like you need a 12 days after Christmas to hold off the post holiday blues too!
I did not copy Kae as I wasn’t feeling very motivated but I love following along with others. I am going to kind of limp into Christmas as I tested positive for Covid this morning. Womp womp. I felt incredibly exhausted last night but thought it might be from the 38 client calls I did the last 3 days. But then cold symptoms hit during the night and sure enough – it’s Covid. I had today off so did my wrapping this am and now am laying low for the rest of the day. I hope no one else gets it so it doesn’t impact our Christmas plans!!
ARRRRG! Lisa, you just cannot catch a break. I hope you feel better soon and that no one else gets it!!! Fingers crossed.
I love this challenge! I am not that organized to determine on which day we do a certain activity. I feel we will do most of that stuff but I won’t do well with temporal restrictions. Eating together, looking at lights, baking- we will do all of that but not sure on which day. Your cookies look wonderful!
Have a great time with your son!
Thank you Daria! I agree, it is a little hard to plan specific activities for certain days. We’ll see how it goes!
I saw this on Kae’s blog and thought what a neat idea. I love that you picked up the idea and ran with it… you have some fun things planned (but I cannot believe you never saw Elf. I think you need to watch it…. unless you don’t like Will Farrell, but I think he’s brilliant in this movie :)).
This is a fun challenge! Remind me next year to participate. That is so funny what your daughter said about the puzzle. I do think it is cute. You’ve never seen Elf? Definitely watch it and let mw know how you like it. Wait, 24 mile run? What are you training for?
This is so fun!! Maybe I’ll do it next year so I can plan it out with fun Christmassy things I want to do.
This made me LOL: “My daughter has announced that it’s the “dumbest thing ever” but my son is humoring me so far.” This sounds EXACTLY something my older nephew would say who I think is the same age as your daughter. My brother might not make it out of the teenage years, lol.
Love this list – but suspect some things had to fall off of it. I love that you celebrate Festivus, and that your kids still wrap their gifts for each other. 🙂
You have to watch White Christmas sometime! It’s a classic!