My New Christmas Management Journal

I am super, super excited to share this one with you guys.  Oh my gosh!  I had so much fun making this and I'm having even more fun working with it.  Waaay too much!

I found these at Walmart

I started with a mini binder and a package of sleeve protectors.  I didn't have any holiday themed scrapbooking paper so I went to Michaels around the first of December, with a 40% OFF coupon, and they didn't have any either!  What the heck?!  I even went online and it was all out of stock.  I didn't realize you are supposed to shop for that kind of stuff in the summer.

Anyway, I got on eBay and there was tons of the stuff to choose from so I ordered it and patiently waited a week to receive it in the mail.  And it was completely worth it.  So cute!

I decorated the cover with my favorite piece and then had a blast selecting, cropping and fitting the other sheets in the protectors and arranging them inside the binder.

I even tried making a pocket divider using cardstock, scrapbook paper and half of a sheet protector.  It turned out so darling. I put several of my scraps in the pocket to use later and made these cute placeholders with some white paper clips I already had and some of these glitter foam stickers I'd bought years ago for the girls to use in crafts.

I printed out more of my homemade lined paper to make lists and jot down ideas.  I also took all of my various handwritten lists and combined them onto a spreadsheet and printed them out.  So much fun to embellish them with paper scraps and holiday stickers I found on Amazon.

Love all of these lovely papers

I made gift tags and Christmas cards (tutorials are coming!) and cute little pockets to neatly store them in until I need them.

To make it extra special I added some favorite recipes as well as pictures I'd taken this year.  I plan to keep it year to year so I can look back at what we did.  I only wish I'd thought to do this sooner.  How fun would it be to have a record of all or our lovely Christmases to look back on?

I decorated this envelope and punched holes in it to keep the gift card in

Our Christmas budget for 2018 is set and I've put in a page for tracking my expenses.  I also put in a gift card I had been given that covers the amount I've budgeted so no money will be coming out of our regular household budget for Christmas this year.  Yay!

The girls gave me a really nice set of gel pens for Christmas that I've been using with my journals.  It makes it even more fun to use those colored inks to write with.  I also have a mechanical pencil and clic eraser to use with it, same as with my household management journal.

I just love having a dedicated place for keeping all of my Christmas plans together and safe.  And this Christmas journal makes it an extra special way to plan and prepare for the holiday.  😍 😃