Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is l airing in late November of twenty twenty four. This is going to be our all Things Holiday episode, something of an annual tradition at this point, just as
many things are traditions. With the holidays airing right before Thanksgiving in the United States, So if you are celebrate that, we wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Sarah, what is the basic scaffolding of your holiday season this year? Yeah?
So, and I'm envisioning everyone listening to this, like while they're on a long drive or I don't know, preparing to get on a plane or something. We are doing Thanksgiving in Philadelphia this year because my parents are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary wedding anniversary, And this is kind of a big deal for us because we do Thanksgiving in Miami Beach pretty much always. We even used to fly down to Miami Beach when we lived in North Carolina.
It's a really, really big holiday in my husband's family, and I usually balanced that out by then during winter break doing something closer to Philadelphia. So this is like a departure or from routine. But I'm excited about it, and we gave them lots of warning, the Miami clan that we would not be here, so kind of excited for it.
What about you guys, Yeah, well, we usually get together with my extended family over Thanksgiving. One chunk of that family is doing sort of what you are doing. They're going elsewhere for Thanksgiving, which means that they won't be available, and so I will probably be posting a smaller Thanksgiving this year. But I am planning on cooking as this is airing, and do the turkey and all that stuff.
You know, we'd be around for much of December. We're going to go away for a few days after Christmas, and you guys are going away over the Christmas time too, right.
Yeah, and this was kind of like took us a long time to decide. This was not one of those trips like I feel like we usually tend to plan our big vacation trips many months in advance and kind of have it slated. But we made a pretty impromptu decision around October to go back to Big Sky and ski again. So super super excited about that. The kids have two weeks off for winter break, and they have a full week off for Thanksgiving, which I understand is not the case with you. Correct.
Yeah, no, and even worse, we have a bunch of like half days for some of the kids, So it's just like the worst, I mean, two half days or whatever. Just give people the week. I don't know, but then I understand it's harder to get to your required one hundred and eighty days or all that. But two weeks off over Christmas is kind of a long time. We had slightly longer than we normally did, and so in my mind, originally I thought we were going to go
somewhere far away for Christmas. But yeah, it didn't seem like a great thing. Some of the kids want to be home for Christmas, I mean and there is nice things to being home for Christmas in terms of doing the same things that you always do and having those traditions. So we're only going away for a couple of days, even though we have about a week and a half off. But I mean, you're trying to get some work done during at least one of those weeks of the holiday break, aren't you. Yeah.
I mean I am blowing through a ton of PTO at my clinical job, which I also did last year, but I did the calculation and I seem to have it to spare. So my plan is to really have like a family centered week of traveling and then a me centered week of getting work done. Thing is, I am not sure what I'm doing with the kids for that work centered week because my husband's going to be on call, and so I do need to figure that
out because I need to get writing done. I want to do some planning type stuff, and I have the idea of maybe like they'll leave me alone for a few hours per day, But I Laura is like shaking her head because she's probably right. It's going to be really disjointed and rough, and someone's going to be asking for something every twenty minutes.
Yeah, and like, if you need the focus mental space to work, I think they need to be elsewhere because otherwise, yeah, even if they're playing video games all afternoon, they may stop at some point for something, and then you're going to feel bad about like yelling at them to get
out of your closet where you do your work. And you also just having the knowing, like sitting down at eight o'clock that you have until five o'clock to work is often good for getting yourself in the feeling of being productive as opposed to like, Okay, I'm trying to grab twenty minutes here before anyone needs me and all that.
I never feel like I have eight to five to work on anything ever, So I don't even necessarily feel like I need a full day, but I need like a solid half day. I need like a three four hour concentrated stretch. So maybe there'll be some camps that I have to look into.
Yeah, yeah, I think that would be wise. I think it would be wise. Well, so Sarah did kind of the organization of this episode. We switch off on who does what with the episodes that are both of us, and so maybe you could talk a little bit about this approach you wanted to take for the holiday episode this year.
Yes, So I promise Laura this would not be simplify your holidays. That's not her favorite trope. It's a little bit overdone. And sometimes we don't see the point of simplifying things that bring you joy. I mean, why not like expound on the things that bring you joy. However, I don't know. I'm very into like the idea of like not going with preconceived ideas and like assuming everything is a half do, or like taking a more design
mindset to your holidays. So my idea was a start from scratch holiday design, and Laura has some feelings on it, so I'll let you talk before I push back.
Well, no, not so much feelings on it. It's just that I think if you have always done something, that is a reason to keep doing it, right, Like, you don't have to not do something because you're like, well it seems a little silly or funny or whatever. I mean, we do the same things over and over again and a lot of aspects of life, and it's partly just because we've done them a great many times. So tradition
has its own weight. So obviously you don't want to do anything mindlessly or if no one enjoys it or gets any meaning from it, then what is the point. But now I think you don't want to assign, like I wouldn't put zero based accounting on the holidays. Let me put it that.
Way that makes sense. I mean you could start with a zero based budget, I guess sort of, but give extra points extra weight to things that are traditional for your family. But I mean I also do feel like sometimes it does raise the question because maybe you always have Aunt Jane's like cranberry sauce, but like every year nobody likes it, Like you could just stop having it
one year and nothing will happen, Like it's okay. Most of these things we're going to talk about are kind of optional fun activities, and if you're at a point in your household when no one's having fun, then it may make sense to revisit. I mean, I know that can be like bittersweet in a way, And I also think it's important to like have the opposite, which is that don't just assume that something won't be fun just
because your kids have reached a certain age. Like you could be like, ah, yeah, that's for like little kids. But if you talk to your kids and you start from zero and you bring that to the table. They're like, no, I love that, that's important, so please like, do it continue that tradition.
Yeah, that's why we were going to have breakfast with Santa this year. Ah see, I love that, And it wasn't the four year old asking for it. So with that in mind, if somebody really wants to make something happen that we've done a lot in the past, it is worth doing.
Yeah, one hundred percent, And I think you're right, but there should be some like points assigned just for the tradition's sake, just not one hundred points in automatic jumping it on to your agenda, because at some point you're going to want to add things and something's going to have to go at some point. We have finite amounts of time, all right, So with that, we're going to go buy category and talk about what we're choosing to do.
If we were we are, we're going to be like, okay, blanks late, what are we choosing, what are we opting in? What are we opting out? In various categories? And I just think these episodes are fun because I'm sure everyone many of the listeners are just thinking about a lot of the same things. Even though Laura celebrates Christmas and I don't, we still have lots of seasonal traditions in common. Just kind of growing up in a common culture, I guess. And yeah, so this will be fun to see where
things differ and where things don't. All. Right, So first category hosting, Well.
We're hosting Thanksgiving, right, even if it'll be small, So we'll do the traditional cooking, which, again, I don't know that everyone likes turkey, but I think not cooking a turkey on Thanksgiving would be quite a statement, like, oh, we're just ordering Chinese food. I'm not sure that that would go over all that well. Right, So there's one where even if it is just tradition, there's sort of
a reason to keep doing that. I don't currently have any plans for a holiday party, but you had one of like having it maybe into January.
Well, we're getting to that later. About parties, I met more like having people like stay at your house and hosting being so you're hosting the Thanksgiving dinner and is anybody coming to stay at your household?
I don't know. I mean, we live pretty close to a lot of our relatives on my side at least, and then we're not having a big get together with my husband's family over the holidays, so I don't think that they would be coming either. So yeah, I think it's pretty much just going to be us.
Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to get to the next category, which is cooking fancy meals. All right, we are back, And by the way, I didn't answer my own question about hosting, and I will say I don't think there's going to be any of like the obvious hosting happening, which is great. It means I don't have to worry about guest bedrooms or menus or anything like that. We'll talk about how I'm still excited to participate in these events, but not
really planning on any hosting this season. So that's for us, all right. So cooking fancy meals, we kind of got to that. With hosting, it sounds like you are kind of on for Thanksgiving? Am I getting that right? Yep?
Getting I'm going to be doing it, although because my brother's wife will not be there, like they're traveling elsewhere for Thanksgiving. She always makes really good roles that are kind of a highlight of Thanksgiving. There was one memorable Thanksgiving where Alex had a one of those kid plates that has like four quadrants in it, and he literally just took four roles and put one in each quadrant. That was what he wanted for Thanksgiving dinner. Just that
no turkey, so she won't be there. So I guess I need to try to come up with some approximation thereof either this role recipe or do something else that people are really going to like, because I think that people will miss so, you know, wish me luck on that one.
That sounds like a fun project. I'm going to ask, even though this is really exiting the scope of our show, are they those like twirly like roles that are like like.
Noah, they are yeast rolls that are like butter flavored, but they're with the like shortening. It's pretty old school Southern recipe kind of thing.
Love it, Love it. We always had these like crescent roles that like kind of rolled up and like, I think I might have eaten a plate with four of them on it. In addition to.
Other things, Thanksgiving not the time to give up carbs.
No, all right, we will exit from roles. But now I'm getting excited, so we're not again. I'm not like cooking, but I'm planning to kind of lean into helping other people cook in various circumstances. So my mom is cooking, but I don't have like stuff that I'm going to be doing otherwise, So I'm just going to be like, I will be your sush chef, and whatever you need help with, I will chop, I will whatever. So I'm looking forward to that kind of like a active role
but not a take charge role. That sounds kind of appealing to me. And I will have to make every season, I have to make some key lime pie. So even though I won't be here for Thanksgiving, I know I have to bring key lime pie to Miami Beach at some time around Thanksgiving or people will be very very disappointed. So I will do that.
Sounds good. How about holiday cards? Are you doing that this year? Yeah?
So sending cards? Definitely doing that. Even if I had never done it before, I'd be excited to do it. And we do New Year's cards because then I don't have as deadline driven and also because then I can collect everyone's address when they send it to me and then use it to make my address list, which helps. I finally made a Google sheet for the holidays this year after many years of like using paper and kind of haphazard systems, so I am so, so so excited to put that into action again this year.
What about you, Yeah, well, this always nudges us to get family photos taken in fall at some point, which we did in late September, and you know, I sort of guilt trip my kids into doing it because you said, this is going to be one of the last years that everyone will just sort of automatically be here, which so getting them all together might be a little bit more complicated other years. I don't know what our holiday card will look like, but still have all five of
them on it the share. So yeah, I enjoyed doing it, getting them printed up, sending them to people, and just a real quick tip, even if you're not sending cards, it's nice to acknowledge if people do send you a card, like you can just sort of text the person and say, hey, cute card, Glad to hear everything's going well with you, or you know, you could share a quick update of your life too, but it's a sort of easy way to keep that connection, even if you're not doing the
whole postal game yourself.
I love that. That's really nice the idea to send a text. Are you exempt from sending the text if you send your own cards? Because I admit I have never done the text thing.
They're letting your own cards. That's the appropriate reciprocal response.
Okay, perfect? And by the way, do your cards have like any I can't remember because I've gotten your cards before and you've gotten mine. I like to put like a very short summary of like stuff that went on, and I take a lot of joy in that. And I know some people don't do that, but I love it when people do that.
Yeah. I mean, we used to do the letter, like the whole letter, but it became a bit more like family resume, like let me, you know, tell what everyone's doing in their lives. So now we tend not to do that. I just write a quick note saying hello on the back. But I do sign them all and put a quick note because and I leave space for it when I've created the card. It's fun to get personal notes. I mean, you know, if you're gon go to the effort of mailing the car. And I know
some people have a whole automated system of it. But if you're gonna go to the effort of mailing it, it only takes a little bit more time to like say hello and sign your name, and so just throw that out there that you may as well take the extra seconds and make it a little bit more personalized.
I like that because then the recipient knows it at least for a moment, like you were thinking about them. That's nice.
Yeah, which is good?
All right? Gifts, Yes, I mean this isn't really an opt out. It'd be interesting if it was. I guess maybe some people do share your opt out of gifts stories. But we definitely are opting into doing gifts this year. However, once again, I think Josh is going to take the lead on the kid gifts. We do do eight gifts for the eight nights of Hanakah. They expect stuff, it's just a thing. However, some of these gifts are very minimal, so it's not it's not eight iPhones or something like that.
And then we are pretty limited with the rest of our gifts with giftless and I don't see that changing. We do our nieces, our nephews, and I will ask for specific submissions to just make that process a little bit easier as to what they want. I do send gifts to my college friends because that's kind of is a year's long tradition that I don't think for planning on letting go at this point. And then, of course gifts for all kinds of staff at work, our nanny,
are cleaner, et cetera. And I keep it very simple. For all of those people, I give cash, and then for teachers, I either give cash or Target gift cards, which I tend to just buy, like all at once,
a whole bunch of them. And as I was creating this easy plan, I was like, you know, when I go to Target to get the gift cards, I should get a nice box of cards to put these into, because it tends to be a weird pain point that I have every year, which is like I have the cash and I don't have anything like nice to put it in, so I need to get like a just generic but cute Happy Holidays box of like, hey, I
should just get fifty cards. I don't think people will care if they get the same one two years in a row, as long as there's a nice gift in there.
And you need a fiftyth wedding anniversary gift for your parents too?
There, right, Yes, So my plan for that, and I mean, honestly, as I was doing this episode, I'm like, I need to put this on my planner is I want to hire a photographer to come take a picture of our family when we're all there for Thanksgiving, my sister, my niece, my parents, et cetera. And then I'm going to have that printed in some form. I think that is probably there's no material gift that would make them really all that happy, but this would be, I think, really great.
Yeah. I mean, the idea of hiring a photographer and putting together an album is actually a really good gift idea for any sort of like older relative or people who have a lot of stuff. But it's a way of preserving memories because it is a pain to hire a photographer and to organize it and to get everyone to gather to do it. So if you're having some sort of family gathering, I did this for so my
sister in law. I hired a photographer when we gathered for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary a few years ago, and we love having those photos and so then I hired a photographer when we got together with my husband's family for my mother in law's eighty fifth birthday. And I can tell you it is a pain. It it's a pain, like nobody wants to do it. Like if you're get together with twenty people, PEO don't want to stop and pose for like fifty photos in different combinations.
It's kind of a party buzzkill. Even more so if you make them wear the same thing, which I did. So if a big group, like everyone wearing jeans on the bottom and white on the top. Some people have done like khakis on the bottom, light blue on the top, So you're gonna be dealing with some whining. I'm just gonna throw that out there, but you will be happy to have them afterwards, Like everyone's gonna be happy to
have these photos. And if you create an album or do some bigger prints as gifts for people, that can take you for a while. So I will throw that out there as an idea. Other things like that, Yeah, like collecting family recipes would be a great way. There's some pretty easy like self publishing technology. You could print ten copies of the book to distribute to your entire family, So thinking of stuff like that might go a long way for people who are not going to be the
sort you shop regular stuff for my kids. On the other hand, I can shop regular stuff, or you're gonna try and get this all done by Black Friday.
I want to order it online. I don't want to have to like go anywhere. Josh likes to go places, so he may want to go places, but I feel like we're both going to be in Philadelphia. And by the way, as people are listening to this, they're like, she's hiring a photographer and it's in like two days, so like we are recording this a few weeks.
Out of time.
Yes, we're not totally delusional, but I mean, to me, that's like we're so preoccupied with other stuff, work, the kids, activities the rest of time, whereas we're going to be like a captive audience in Philadelphia for the week of Thanksgiving and there's going to be all these sales and stuff. So I don't want to stand in line at like some Big Bucks retailer at six am or something like that. But I assume a lot of these deals to be you as.
That kind of person, Sarah. I know you were fighting for that television.
Yes, I want the like that doll that like spoke or something like that tickle me Elmo. Thankfully, I think we've aged out of that, so yeah, no, there used to be like a separate cyber Monday, but since now people generally just shop online as a normal thing, many of them, I'm assuming there'll be plenty of actual Black
Friday deals that I could purchase with my fingers. So I just think that would be a really nice way of like knocking a lot of that out and then entering the month of December worrying about other things because I also have a kid with a birthday, a husband with a fiftieth birthday, and like just like a million other.
Concerts, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, totally. So I actually do
like going to the stores around Christmas. I mean partly because you know, we buy so much stuff online and it's very easy, but you get ideas by kind of looking at a section, and obviously an online algorithm can suggest stuff too, But I feel like every time I go to one of the bigger targets around here, or you know, the Walmarts or whatever, I come up with toy ideas that I wouldn't have thought of, and often it's the older kids even who there might be fun
games or things like that that I again I wouldn't know to think about, but there are things that are targeted for say twelve year olds or ten year olds or whatever, and a smart store will have a display along those lines, and so that can give you great ideas. So yeah, I will be in the stores. I am sure there will be a lot of shopping. Will always be more shopping than there should be. But the good news is in my family, the kids that it's sort of easy to overbuy toys for, like the younger too,
the nine year old and the four year old. We'll have birthdays right after Christmas, so it's fine. So if I overbuy, I can just shove the extra stuff into a corner, put it under wraps, bring it back out further birthdays. One thing I do, and I will do this again. You know we're not going to zero some accounting here. I make a list to keep track of who's getting what and make sure it is even. Because everyone needs to unwrap about the same number of stuff.
Everyone needs to have at least one thing under there that they are very excited about. So sometimes I've even bought like a bigger, cheap thing for somebody because all their presence were small and they needed something big to make it look like a bigger pile of presents. And that's just one of those things you do as a parent of five children.
And you know, I think this might be our first Google sheet hanikah, Like.
I see a spreadsheet Google sheet, honey in my mind.
That needs to happen, and that would help with the like evenness, you could like highlight the one big gift and then you know, make sure. But when you say equal like, it's not like you're tallying exact now.
And I mean, I don't do money. Like what I want is everyone to get stuff that they are happy about. And the nature of this is that older children get more expensive stuff than younger children. So you know, like an iPhone versus you could get a lot of toys. I mean, you could go like in a whole spree through Walmart for toys for the cost of an iPhone. But that's just the nature of it. So I'm not
going for that. I'm going for equal happiness. Love it all right, Let's take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back with more on figuring out the holidays.
All right, we are back. I will have to report back to let you know if my efficient gift strategy ends up coming to fruition, but I'm kind of excited about it. We're going to move on to parties and specifically throwing parties. So do you have a holiday party planned, Laura, Nope, it sounds fun.
I'd like to do it sometime, but I think I would probably do it as kind of an open house sort of thing, like just for a couple of hours. People drop by and make it very much adult and kid so invite like people and kids classrooms and their parents or the kids.
You know.
I know some of my kids friends, but don't know their parents all that well for the older ones because they kind of get together independently at some point without parental involvement. So yeah, I mean, I think it'd be fun, but I'm not necessarily taking that on this year. Maybe in the future.
Yeah, I think I kind of feel pold to do some kind of neighborhood something. I don't know exactly what it would look like, but I feel like I've gotten to know enough like locals that it'd be fun to do. Yeah, Like similarly like an open house. But I think I'm just thinking about like the actual calendar and the realistic nature of probably not getting it in December, so I'm thinking it would be more like New Year. It's January. I mean, for us, it's not the doldrooms. No one's cold,
no one's sad, everyone's like woo who. It's lovely. But I still think kind of like post vacation inks, et cetera, just a little happy hour to like lighten the mood might be fun.
Yeah, So my church choir has a twelfth Night party, which is really great for timing because people tend not to be busy the first weekend of January, where they definitely are in the December weekends before Christmas, and then it just like pushes forward the holiday cheer a little bit further. I will point out that the twelve days of Christmas are in fact after Christmas. Many people don't know that, but it starts on the twenty fifth goes to the sixth, and so you may think about how
you could celebrate that that. There might be various festive opportunities to stretch out the season a little bit more. So, maybe we can combine some of these last categories, I'm like, oh my god, we still.
Have a lot of categories to get through, and we're really into the holiday spirit.
We are really into the holidays.
I'm going to consolidate the attend party, but I want to know if you're going to like design your clothing aesthetic for any holiday parties, have you thought about how that might go.
I think I've mentioned this on this podcast before that I realized over the years that there was this issue that my festive dresses were like little straps or whatever. And it's cold in December, so I don't really actually want to wear these dresses in December. I'm as wearing some sort of wrap around it, like I'm practically wearing my windoor coat into the event because I'm like too cold and I can't be bothered to be uncomfortable if
I'm like at something. So eventually, last year just went on Amazon as one does, and specifically looked for long sleeve dresses and so got something that's more of a velvety type thing. It's like a Mermaid cut. I really like it. In fact, I liked it so much I bought it in Green. Last year, I decided just to buy it in blue this year. So that is what I will be wearing to various holiday parties this year. It is not the same dress. I could wear the
same dress. I don't think anyone would care or notice, but just for my own sense of dignity, it is not the same dress, but it is very very similar.
I love it a very decide once kind of approach. I also have like one gold dress that I'm like that works for any holiday. And I got a sparkly shirt for the Taylor Swift concert and I got in the Target kids section. But it looks like way better than that, and I think that's going to be like for casual holiday stuff. That plus jeans, I feel like I can rocket anything sparkly.
Right, Absolutely, anything sparkly can work as a holiday thing. Speaking of which, decor, if one is deciding from scratch, what sort of decor to do, Sarah, are you doing any sort of decor? No? No, okay, so we are. I have had it kind of on my list of one hundred dreams to have the house professionally decorated for Christmas. We have sort of started moving in that direction that we got the fancy tree last year, but it's an
artificial trees. We own it now, so it's very easy to just like put it back up and have those. We have a couple other you know, nice decorations that are our house manager is going to put up. And she also got a group of people. It's a company that does window washing in the summer and in the winter they do holiday decorations. So they are going to do a bunch of trees in our yard, you know, with lights, because they have the ladders and all the lights and all that stuff. And so I'm excited to
see how this is going to look a figure. I'll just try it something a little bit more festive this year. Don't ever have to do it again if we don't like it, or if it seems like a waste, but you know, may as well give it a whirl.
And do they have takedown services as well?
They do. You would absolutely not do this so that well, you're borrowing the lights from them, like you don't own the lights, right like they own the lights, and so they put them up and then they come take them down.
That's excellent. I love it. I can't wait to see it.
Yeah, we'll hopefully it'll be up when you're here.
Oh really By Thanksgiving. That's exciting.
Yeah yeah, oh well they were almost booking a weekend in October to do it. I was like, Okay, I feel a little bad about doing that. Maybe we push it into November. So but I mean, you know, you pay the same amount if it's up for like two weeks versus two months, so you may as well. May as well have the full on festivities for two months.
Love it all right?
Holiday going to yoh, go ahead.
I was gonna say, Holiday Media, we can combine our performance category with our movies and music category.
Well, so we were exchanging notes back and forth here, and you know, we often go to the Nutcracker and stuff like that, and Sarah does too. But she made an interesting point that one could decide to not go one year and then go the next year, and if you go to something every two years, it feels a little bit more fresh and new and not like you
just went, but it's still part of the tradition. So I think that's a great idea in general, Like if there's something you enjoy but it seems like it's kind of a big deal, like it's a you know, pricey tickets or something like that, deciding to do it every other year means it's still a holiday tradition, but it's not quite as frequent. I think that's a nice thought and jump.
Yeah, I just want there to be like a little bit more novelty, Like I feel like we went not that long ago, even though I guess it was a full year. So yeah, that might be our policy every for two years, maybe every two to three years we go to the Miami City Bell.
Well. I mean I've seen like, yeah, the Nutcracker like ten times in a little and maybe maybe it's time to take a slight break from that. But we are going to go see the Rackats. We have not gotten our tickets yet. We will. Well, we went for the first time last year with a group, enjoyed it quite a bit, and so I'm just going to take some day in December to go to New York and see the Racket, see the Rockefeller Plaza, Christmas Tree, go out to dinner with the family, and just kind of make
a day of it. It's actually a really good show. I never went when I lived in New York because I had this idea. It was like, oh, it's so cheesy, like all the tourists are lined up around the block to go into it, and so you know, we needed something to do with the group last year, so we did it. And it's actually a really good show.
There's a reason everyone's lining up around the block.
Everyone's there. It's so fun. So that's super cool. I would totally do that. That's great. You're doing more of the movie thing, right, Like you guys have your favorite have.
To I don't know if your kids, like my kids love I mean, they have to watch Elf. They have to watch Home Alone. I mean they don't have to, they will want to. I have to watch Charlie Brown Christmas, and then I drag whoever many kids I can get, and then there are like some newer fun ones that like we watched eight Fit Christmas, I think last year that was.
Really really good.
And then I love, love, love holiday music. So my policy is I don't want to like start it too early because I want it to feel really special. So December first, like dismplaylists are.
On December one. Yeah, December one is also the earliest that the Elf can appear in our house, which is a tradition that I am only doing because it is a tradition. The Elf would perhaps not be welcome in our head.
I love it. You're doing it because they love it, not because it's just a tradition. You're doing it because they would be sad if that elf was not there, you know.
I yes, maybe more people can be involved in the elf wonder this year. Maybe the elf can have little helpers who are interesting. So, oh well, let's see cooking we've already talked about, like holiday meals and stuff. Do you do any baking though, I mean, do you have baking sessions? Gingerbread cookies?
I love the idea of it, but we generally don't.
My mom used to.
Make these really good shortbread cookies with iconic designs. They were super good, and I loved that. A couple of people in my office at work tend to make cookies and bring them in because I enjoy eating them. But I'm not putting this on my list. I just don't want to like another thing. We might do some like prefab gingerbread house creation with a kit or something, because the kids it's like a fun well maybe your kids cheating out of my house. I mean, we like gingerbread
kit type. I think we did that last year. I think we did, But we could do it again, they would be over the moon.
So yeah, so okay, I'll just buy enough kits for everyone. I'll put that on the list. But I put baking on my holiday fund list mostly because my daughter loves baking and she'll do a lot of baking on her own, which she is allowed to do as long as she remembers to turn off the oven, which it's good to have somebody in the house at least at some point within the hour she is doing it, just to confirm
it's off. But she can do most of it. I think she can take the lead on it, and I will just make sure that all the ingredients are available for her to do that, and then I can be more of the sous chef for that experience and have a real holiday baking extravaganza. But the upside is that's something that you can put in a lot of different places.
You can kind of look at a weekend that has say, two parties and a trip to a light display and like a rehearsal for a performance, like you can't put something else big in there, but you could put a two hour baking event that would fit. So I think as you're making your holiday fundlist, it's good to have
a range of activities. There's some stuff that is specific to a time, some stuff that there are lots of options, like the roquettes, but you do have to commit and then other things that you're in one make a time for it, but it could go in lots of different cookies, movies, cookies and movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are or if you have any sort of craft you're doing. I don't think we put that on here for us, but it's something we could do. And then you always want to
plan for the next year too. I mean that's a big part of the holiday fund for you.
I love doing that. I like doing it the second week of when my kids are off and I'm off and like January is just on the horizon. I don't like wait to fill in my planner. In fact, this year, I think I mentioned it on a prior episode, but I just was like diving in in October, like I have stuff to schedule in January and I'm not magically like I need to use this thing now. But at the same time, that's when I do my like more formal scheming of like all kinds of goals and things
like that. Now I am going to put a plug for two different things. Number One, I run personally a Best Laid Plans at Home kind of annual planning course that's four hours. It's actually based on what we do at Best Laid Plans Live. And then people wanted like
a virtual version. So if you're like I want a lot of structure around my planning and I want to sit there for four hours with you with the workbook and like do it with you, that is still available and for a lower key version of that that's still really really fun. We have our Patreon which every December, and we haven't set the date yet for this, but it'll probably be.
Setting after November twenty six when this is airing. So the good news is it hasn't happened yet.
Yes, you still have a chance. It'll be an hour usually around twelve Eastern time, where it'll be like a mini version of that like planning, and you'll get to dive into your the beginning of your annual planning, including maybe figuring out when you're going to do the rest of it in more detail. But we do visioning and we start with goal setting and all that kind of
fun stuff. So if you want the long, long long version, the four hour version that's bestly plans at home, and then if you want the little mini planning that will still really get you started, join us in Patreon. It's a lot of fun.
Yeah, I like to have this mostly set when we do our goals episode for the next year, which we always record seemingly early, and so I'm like, I gotta get this locked down by then, so you know, but a lot of fun things going on with the holidays, lots of traditions or new traditions you can start. I think it's fun to always try, you know, you do
the stuff that you enjoyed from the past. You can also try one or two new things each year because maybe you'll discover something that you want to do again and again. Of course, you may also discover you don't like it, and then you don't have to worry about it or think about doing it again in the future. But hopefully everyone's making a great holiday fun list as they are hearing this episode, and we look forward to hearing what you come up with. But our question, Sarah,
what do you want for Hankakah or Christmas? Do you guys get Hanakah presents like the adults or it's only the kids. It's only the kids.
We don't that's the funny part. I'm like, but you know, I think it's sometimes maybe I'll buy myself a Hankika gift. You should buy yourself eight gifts, Sarah, I might need a sufferate.
Little like one could be like a nail polish. One could be a lipstick. One could be a book, right, like you know.
Yeah, you're right, that might be fun. Maybe I'll open them up in front, like, oh, look what I get today. So I think if someone were actually buying me a gift, which like, well, my college friends we kind of buy each other gift, so I get gifts that way. I think loungewear, like I want to buy myself some nice like I want to elevate my loungewear. I want to
like feel cute and comfy after hours, so loundwear. And then I think a book that like if you love a book and you really like see that other person loving a book, I think that it's like a really fun gift. Or if someone had a cosmetic product that they think is like a miracle worker, like buy it for me.
That sounds good?
What about you?
Yeah, I mean what I honestly want is like to get away for a while. It was like go sit in a cabin in the woods for a while and write and somebody else will handle the details of my life. So we'll see if that happened. But stay tuned. Love of the Week, Sarah, what do you have?
Oh man?
Be guys, we've had a lot of loves of the weeks in this Yeah.
I just love holiday albums of all my favorite artists. They make me happy. My favorite is Casey mus Graves. I've shared them before, but maybe I'll have a new favorite this year. I'll have to shop around.
We'll try new ones out. Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean I like the holidays in general. I would like to make sure that my mental load isn't overwhelming with it, but it usually isn't, so we'll be having many people take on different projects of it. But holidays are a festive times. It's good to do good to do well. This has been best of both worlds. We've been discussing all things holiday. Would love to hear what you have
planned for your holiday seasons. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together