Even though the holidays are going to look a little different for us this year, as I’m sure they will for many families, we will still be celebrating! And I’m going to do the same thoughtful planning that I would if we were expecting a houseful of guests. To help keep everything organized, I created a few new tools and wanted to share them with you.

• Holiday Menu – The first thing I do to get ready for a holiday is plan what we’ll be eating – it influences almost everything else. This is also the most fun part of the planning for me!

• Holiday Recipes – When I have a lot of different things to make for one meal, I find it very helpful to have all the different recipes together in one place versus leafing through multiple cookbooks, recipe cards, etc. I also condense the recipe instructions as much as possible so I can refer to them quickly and easily.

• Holiday Meals – I like to keep track of anything special I want to make around the holiday: traditional pre-holiday meals, sweets and snacks, holiday breakfast, special leftover plans, etc.

• Grocery List – The list of supplies we need for a typical holiday meal is always quite long and involves multiple stores, so this is an easy way to keep it all in order.

• Holiday Table – I try to come up with the plan for the table early on so that I have plenty of time to get anything I’m missing. I often use separate areas from where we’ll be eating to house drinks and/or food, so I make sure to consider them as well.

• Holiday To Do – Putting everything from ironing the tablecloth to defrosting ingredients on a to do list helps ensure I don’t miss anything. And it encourages me to do as much as possible ahead!

• Holiday Schedule – I break out what needs to get done and when on the actual holiday, especially the food prep and cooking, based on when we’re eating.

You can also download all the pages together.

Here’s to making the coming holidays extra special!