Holiday Interval, week 4: Make & Bake Week

We’re almost into double-digit days in December. As the countdown speeds up, it’s time to start making, doing, and baking!

Starting early with Christmas crafting, planning, and all the other holiday related doings helps reduce stress and make the actual week of Christmas less hectic and more enjoyable. If we’re going to focus on actually celebrating and enjoying Christmas with our family and friends, then it’d be a good idea to get most of the work of Christmas done early.

So let’s do it!

If you make Christmas gifts, it’s a good idea to have the goal of getting them finished this week. Then you still have another week before Christmas week to use as a buffer in case there’s an unexpected setback.

It’s a good week to start the Christmas baking. Breads and cookies all freeze beautifully, so you can start now, get a taste of Christmas, but stick most of it into the freezer, then you can pull them out and have calm, collected celebrations Christmas week!

This is also the week I make sure the kids do any Christmas activities or crafts that I’d planned on. It’s easy to think, “Oh, we should do that,” and then it never happens because there is no time set aside for it. This is the week to make sure some of those things happen.

The kids want to dip pretzels into chocolate and decorate them, do sugar cookies, and maybe craft a few Christmas presents for family members. As they get antsy for Christmas, it’s a good time to direct that energy and anticipation toward something productive, and then we won’t be scrambling last minute before parties or celebrations.

You might not finish all your Christmas creating this week, but you need to start this week to avoid the last-minute crunch and stress.