12 Weeks until Christmas!

Well it's official, we have exactly 12 weeks until Christmas! (Please do not throw anything at me!) I hate feeling rushed during the holidays so I'm making an effort to start planning now. This includes the much loved holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving, which seem to come one after the other much too quickly for me.

I wish I could find a planner that is already made up online that I would not have to buy, but everything I've found only covers Christmas, and that is too narrow a focus for me. I can't leave out the other 2. I love planning things, carry through is not always so great, but I am really going to try this year. I always feel like I'm throwing together the holidays every year!

Halloween---luckily this year Halloween falls on a Saturday, so the kids will not be rushing around after school, and I will not be trying to get supper into them before Trick-or-Treating. I have most of my Halloween decorations up already, since those and my fall things are usually put up on Sept. 1st to get me in the fall spirit. Our school district is off this year on Friday, Oct. 30th so I'm thinking of having a small party with a few friends and family over. Of course the food will have to be "spooky", like chocolate covered marsh mellows and mummy pizzas, and maybe edible eyeballs! I want to decorate the yard a bit for the party, but frugally, so I'm looking for things to do with stuff I have around the house.

Thanksgiving---this holiday doesn't alter much in our home. My Mom and Grandmother will be invited over and we will have the traditional turkey, gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, pumpkin bars (pumpkin pie is not a favorite in our house, but pumpkin bars are---Oh so delicious!

Christmas---again another holiday that is rooted in tradition in our house with Christmas eve potato soup and ham sandwiches at Mother's house and Santa and unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. Lots of baking and shopping...I hate shopping, going to try and get that done starting this week!

I am going to try to start a new tradition in our family this year. I always loved learning about other countries and their customs, traditions and foods and so I am going to start introducing my Sons to a new country every month! We will start with the US for Thanksgiving...an easy beginning, but we are going to go back and really explore the 1st Thanksgiving and how it differs from what we do today. I want to dive into Germany for December, because they have a lot of cool holidays and customs for this time of year. I'll post about what we do later.

Anyway...off to start planning Halloween!