10 Holiday Survival Tips- Will You Survive This Holiday Season?

I LOVE the holidays. Who doesn't? Yummy food, presents, family, friends. Ya right! Who am I kidding? The holidays are a nightmare! Traffic, rude shoppers, ungreatful people, the exhaustion, and the list continues.

But, Here are my 10 tips for surviving, I hope they help you too!

10. Make sure the relatives are entertained: Don’t you just hate when you have your relatives or in-laws hanging out in the kitchen while YOU are trying to cook. They share how THEY would do it, or how they think YOU should do it. This is your holiday meal; you cook it how you want to.

9. Shopping with coupons and during sales: Saving money is good. Try to get your shopping do as soon as possible. Hit a sale at Bed, Bath, and Beyond during a sale (I still want that remote, lol!) and take one of their 20% off coupons with you! You can surely find a gift for someone on your list there. Plus, they get a great gift, and you don’t have to spend a fortune!

8. Photo greeting cards: Photo greeting cards are a 2 for 1 deal. Everyone has a family member that is always asking for photos of the kids, and/or family. So, you get to send out your usual holiday cards, plus the photo on it, and everyone gets the photo too! Tiny Prints has a great selection of Christmas Cards!*

7. More than one Christmas: At one point or another, either you as a child or you with your kids have done it. You throw the kids in the car and visit all the family members at each of their houses. Make it easier on yourself and the kids. All you need to do is plan 2 or 3 smaller trips on different days rather than one. Less crankiness on a holiday = Good!

6. Make clean up a breeze: obviously or well at least hopefully you have a good idea of whose coming for dinner. Create a list for everyone to help with clean up. For example, one person washes dishes, one person makes take home plates, ect.

5. Take a break: Everything can be so overwhelming, especially if you are the host/hostess. Take a sanity break. Hide in your room. Go for a walk. Have “me” time.

4. Yankee Swap: Yankee swaps are a great idea if there are a lot of kids in the family. Just make sure they are gender neutral. This makes less fuss if a boy is unhappy with a Barbie doll.

3. Start early: If you are hosting dinner for a holiday, start it early. Have your guests arrive at noontime instead of 4pm. You always have that lingering relative who stays until all hours of the night. Starting it early will hopefully have them out by 10! 

2. Organize your emails: Most invites now a days are not in the form of a card in an envelope. They are electronic through email. Make a special folder named “Holiday Correspondence” to keep all the details for the holidays in. Who’s coming, who’s not coming, who is bringing desert, who is bringing a new boyfriend or girlfriend, ect. So, there is no confusion and you can go back and look up what everyone said if you forget. Thus, making it go smooth, well as smooth as a family event can go.

1. Enjoy: Enjoy it, after all the holidays only come once a year!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

*Tiny Prints provides stylish, modern and unique stationery from photo cards to personalized greeting cards to thank you cards and business cards. Offering exclusive designs from the nation’s top designers, easy card personalization, a powerful preview engine and top-notch customer service and paper quality, their designs have been lauded by numerous television networks, publications and celebrities. With Tiny Prints by your side the Holidays will be a cinch! They offer adorable Thanksgiving Cards, Christmas Cards, Hanukkah Cards, and even New Years Cards. All fully customizable and personalizable

**DISCLAIMER: I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Tiny Prints blogging program, making me eligible to get a $75 Tiny Prints gift certificate! For more information on how you can participate, click here.

So, you have a Holiday card dilemma? Shutterfly is your answer!

 

I absolutely LOVE Shutterfly. Their designs are magnificent, and elegant. They have designs for all occasions. Specifically, their Christmas collection is one two words…SIMPLY AMAZING! There are so many layouts, colors and designs to choose from. This is going to make it hard for us to choose our Christmas cards. I love designs that opt for multiple photos, but keep the elegance.


I always go for Holiday photo cards that are folded, so I can write on the inside. To me, it feels more personal than having the card just mass sent to everyone. That's not so personal. You want your card recipients to feel special and thought of during this holiday time.





  We recently had holiday/family photos done, and they came out good great! I want to incorporate those into whichever card we end up choosing. I found these two first, now one is a folded card, and the other is not. I had my husband say he liked the green one better. However, I can't take his vote because green is his favorite color, and if he had it his way, we would just use a piece of colored on construction paper as Christmas cards because they are not at the top of his list. (lol, probably not, but he wouldn't take the time and effort that I do to have Christmas cards.)

So, I personalized one that I liked just for an example here, and I think it's pretty good, but I am still going to play around with it more. There are so many colors, and templates, and designs to choose from, I am glad I started worrying about our Christmas cards early! lol.



 

While I am at it, I might just go look at their selection of Christmas party invitations! I would love to have a great well thought out, and planned christmas party this year!

Happy Holidays!  
Disclaimer: This blog post is written by me, in 100% my opinion of Shutterfly's Christmas/Holiday Collection. I am writing my 100% opinion so I may recieve 50 Free Greeting cards for this holiday season. Are you a Blogger? If you are, would you like 50 Free Greeting cards from Shutterfly? If you answered yes to both, please click here for more details!