Every Needful Thing

Every Needful Thing...or all the stuff you need to decorate that you can never find or you don't have enough of when the time comes.

    It never fails.  Every year, when we are setting out to put up the lights and decorations we always end up needing something and can't find it or we're simply out of it.  Usually it is batteries and lightbulbs.  A couple of years ago I set out to eliminate that frustration once and for all by creating a plan to get ahead of the problem. 

      I first needed to make a plan of my decoration design.  That meant actually drawing it on paper so I could look at it and decide what I was going to be doing, and every year that seems to change a bit to keep things interesting.

 I drew a rudimentary picture of the front of my house, and then of my yard.  I filled in the features to consider, like windows, trees, doors, front porch, pillars, sidewalk, driveway, bushes, just every little thing that I needed to either allow space for or make a plan to decorate.

 Your drawing can be cute and creative like this one.

 Or simple and basic like this one (which is more like my drawing skill anyway)

Or you can use a CAD program (computer aided design) which will give you extremely accurate measurements to work with, and can be turned side to side, upside down and backwards.  

For me and my particular use, the basic drawing is sufficient. 

   Then I listed categories, such as Front Porch, Large Plum Tree, East Fence, you get the idea.  In the individual categories I detail my plan for decorating that area.  For 2014 my plan looked like this.

Front Porch: lighted garland over door, decorated sleigh, wreath, lighted trees in urns

Pillars: red uplights, shepherds hooks with lanterns

Bay Windows: Icicle lights

Roof Line: Icicle lights

Large Plum Tree: White uplight

Forsythia Bush: Twinkle lights

You get the idea.

You can even make copies of the picture and draw different ideas to see how they work.  Color in lights and see if you like it, if it's too busy, not busy enough, and if you know the dimensions of the areas you will know how many strings of lights in each color you will need to complete your design.  The last thing you need is to get all excited about a light plan and then half way through hanging it you realize you have too few strings of matching lights, or  for instance, the strands you have are too long and overhang in a way that doesn't look very clean.  So then you have to run out, get some more lights, and hope they match nicely, because not all whites are the same hue and not all twinkle lights twinkle at the same rate or speed.  It's happened to me enough times to have learned my lesson and plan ahead.

Once you have your plan in place you can then figure out say how many light hooks you will need for your roof and window lines, or staples, or what have you.  This time of year a lot of places already carry many of the decorating items you will need, and oftentimes they are on sale to get people buying them.  If they aren't available yet in your area, just keep track in your plan how many you will need when they do hit the store shelves.  Also, remember things like light testers, wire cutters, any tools you typically use when decorating.

If you use duct tape, and let's face it who doesn't, in your decorating, put that in your plan.  Add however many light bulbs your blow molds will need, the batteries moving displays use, and then spend a little time locating the supplies you normally use for set up (I use tent stakes and twine quite a bit) and get them into a storage container marked in a way you can identify it.  Then, and this is critical, put it where you keep your holiday decorations.  I know that sounds like a no brainer instruction, but, we all know how things just get separated or moved when they are just put "where we know we will be able to find it later".

You can keep your plan in a binder, or folder, or on your computer.  It will be very handy this year, and even for years to come when you want to plan something new or re-create the same look over and over.  You can also add notes of what worked, what didn't work, and what supplies you need to get for next year.  By the way, the days just after Christmas are the best time to grab some of those things as they are at clearance prices.


Now you have your plan, you have all your supplies either organized or a plan for getting them as they are available, and you put everything you need in the same location as your holiday decorations.  All you need to do now is wait and breath a sigh of relief that you are ready when the air turns crisp and the holidays are looming large. That is, until next month when we have another prep task for your holiday decorating.  Tune in, and be that much more ready.

Getting back to normal

Just a quick post to update everyone on what has happened to me since my last post.  Well, I was sick.  Very sick.  In a lot of pain.  So, the blog suffered.  I had surgery in October, right at the beginning of the holiday commercial season, so, if you have to be laid up in bed recovering, what better way to do it.

My surgery was two days before Halloween, so I was able to get my house ready for trick or treaters, and then I handed it all over to my grown up girls.  After the 31st I instructed the kids in taking down the Halloween decorations, and getting them kind of put away the way I
do it.

Then I slowly, over the course of the month of November, got the house all decorated, inside and out for Christmas.  Even without my actual manual labor the whole thing turned out pretty good.


So, it wasn't my usual over the top display, but, it will do for this year.  I've spent most of the holiday pretty much in bed, but, watching holiday specials and movies has made the whole thing bearable.

Now that I'm back on my feet and ready for another great year, it's time to say farewell to 2014 and hello to 2015.

Building the Christmas playlist

Building a Christmas playlist is a daunting task. With so many wonderful versions of the literally countless holiday songs, the idea of compiling them all into a playlist seems overwhelming. But, listen to Christmas music we must. The playlist will of course have to vary in selection and in mood, without repeating the same song with only a change in the version or performer. So, how is one to accomplish this all important job?  Sigh, with hard work, time, and organization.  That's the only way.

To begin with, we must organize our holiday music collection into categories.  My chosen category names are Spiritual, Classical, Old Favorites, New Age, Movie Hits, Rockin, Jazz, and Kids. I am careful to put each song into the most fitting category.  This could mean stacking CD's in piles, or boxes labeled for the category, or, in the case of digital copies, creating a playlist folder appropriately labeled to drop them in. For compilations the task is a bit more complicated.  We will have to either put them in a category already created, or, if they are truly a diverse compilation, we may have to make a separate category just for them.

After all the available music is categorized, we then move onto removing songs that are either duplicates or we just don't like them enough to have them in a playlist.  This could involve making a note for each CD, perhaps a sticky note, with the names of the songs we do want, or, removing the digital copies from our playlists.




That is truly the most time intensive part of this job.  Now it's time for the fun part, making our playlists, and yes, I do have more than one.  After all, I'm not always in the mood for the happy, peppy songs like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or It;s a Marshmallow World.  There are plenty of times I want the playlist to just be soft and cozy feeling.  Other times I may want to hear a variety that moves from one category to another randomly. So, that adds another category, and you can name it anything you want, I prefer to just call it Christmas, with the other specific categories being Christmas Jazz, Christmas Spiritual, etc.  Those are the final playlist names, and if you just want one playlist that contains everything, the job is almost done.

So, now I have my categories sorted, with all duplicates and unwanted songs removed.  Now, make sure you know how much space you have in your music storage device, be it a hard drive or I-pod or what have you. If you don't have enough you will need to clear it for your music, because we all know that the music takes priority.  Something else will just have to go, or be stored elsewhere.

Now comes to time intensive part. Here is where you create the final playlist folders, with the final names you have chosen. With your digital songs you will just be dragging and dropping them from their original folders to the final folders. The CD's will be a slow going process of inserting the CD, selecting the songs you want to download and into the folders you want, and then wait while they move from CD to folder. Lather, rinse, repeat.  Yada yada yada.

After all of your songs are transferred into your final folders I highly recommend backing up your playlists to either an external hard drive or a cloud drive. The last thing you want is to have to repeat this whole process over again if your current hard drive crashes.

And there you go.