The holiday season has officially started! Holy hell, I'm in trouble.

Can I just start out by saying that I don't know how moms who work full time do it all. I'm only working 10 hours a week on a year-end project for my old agency and it's proving tough. I can handle it when my plans aren't disrupted, but the past few weeks in addition to working and doing my usual "mom stuff" I've also sat on a jury, had some car issues, had a baby with a head cold, and hosted a dinner for 15 people. I just feel like I don't have any time anymore - yet, when I was working much more than this (and, granted, only had one kiddo), I really didn't have any time. And then I suppose that those amazing moms who work full-time must really really have no time. I know, I know, my obsession with time management is such a self-absorbed middle class sobfest, a "rich world problem" if you will. There are people who have real problems out there!

But back to me. Not saying that I'm rich, but man, I wish I was! What's that wise, old saying? You can never be too rich or too thin. Hrumph. Ain't that the truth, Gwyneth? Hate her. Yeah, so anyway, like I said, we aren't rich. When Lucy was born we went from 1.75 incomes to a single income. Hence, I'm working a bit right now so that we can have a not totally scaled-back Christmas. And, boy oh effing boy, Christmas is right around the corner. And I'm flipping out because when in the hell am I going to find time to get everything ready? Bah!

Annnnnnd we've come full circle - time management. I'm trying to make things easy on myself where the holidays are concerned, but also stay on some type of budget. And here's how:

Limit my Lightning McQueen purchases.
Wow. I can't believe that I am a 32-year-old woman who has to repeat that mantra to myself while shopping. But Cars merchandise is an instant hit with Patrick and it's so easy to just buy everything I see because I know he will flip over it all! To re-purpose a quote from my favorite movie, Tommy Boy, I could "take a dump in a box and mark the box 'Lightning McQueen's Toilet'" and Patrick would adore it.

Now that I've grossed you all out (my mom is shaking her head in disgust right now, So vulgar, Mandy!), I'm happy to report that I actually restrained myself when I hit the new H&M this week; I could have easily picked up an entire wardrobe for Patrick consisting of only Cars attire, but I didn't. A sweatshirt, some jammies and socks. Done.


Let others spend their precious time baking.
Instead of slaving in the kitchen for hours making and packaging cookies for neighbors and friends, I'm joining up with my stepmom to do an assembly line of cranberry scone mix with a tag attached saying, "Do it yourselves, jerks. Merry Christmas!"


Gift bags.
I love to wrap. Oh! How! I! Love! To! Wrap! I'm an ex-professional wrapper, dontcha know? (Word up to my ZCMI II Foothill peeps!) But, most people don't care about it. Throw a gift in a bag with some tissue, and hey, what do you know? It's still an awesome gift, just took less effort for everyone involved in the transaction to both conceal and reveal it. Win-win. I'll wrap the kids' stuff though. And guess what kind of wrapping paper I bought for P? LIGHTNING MCQUEEN. Go figure.


Pre-printed holiday cards.
My dear mother-in-law offered me access to all of her stamping and crafting supplies so she could show me how to make holiday cards as beautiful as the ones she sends out, but hold the phone! Wait, what's that you say, Carol? The average card takes about an hour to make? Hellz to the no. I just can't. I would like to. I'm a closet crafter, but if I spend that much time on cards my house will never get vacuumed and the dogs will starve. Not the mention the children! Think of the children!

Ahem . . . but I'm not going to totally slack on cards like I did last year. I'm getting some cards printed from Tiny Prints. They have a zillion different options in terms of pricing and how many photos you want on the card. I'm thinking we'll go with either one family photo, or one of each of the kiddos. And listen up Mormons and Catholics, they have layout options that can accommodate up to 12 photos - one for each of your kids! Yay! Duggars, you are out of luck. And batshit crazy too, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm thinking that it would be smart to go with a Tiny Prints layout that offers space for some text. I usually hand-write personal notes in my Christmas cards, but again, I GOT TIME CONSTRAINTS, YO. Here's the back of a tri-fold layout I like, but the sample message is too pulled-together and perfect for us.



We would change ours up a bit, of course, reading something along the lines of:

2011 was a clusterfuck year for us, quite honestly. 4-year-old Patrick is an adoring older brother to his new baby sister Lucy, and is handling not being the center of attention in constructive ways, like throwing the iTouch across the room. Lucy has a blowout every other day, and that's in a good week. Matt transitioned into a new department at work and then transferred again 10 months later. Mandy had post-partum depression again and plans to have her tubes tied. Our inbred dog Maui is so neurotic that we need to get him on some type of sedative and our mutt Milo is still eating his own shit.

Or maybe I should skip the warm and fuzzy family letter and just go with this design, no?

How do you say "Lucy is cuter than this baby" in French?

Or nix the photo all together and go with this simple card with the sweet rounded corners:

The shape of the partridge actually kind of reminds me of Lu;
she's 75th weight percentile, you see.

Decisions, decisions. Well, those of you who get cards from us will know what I went with when you receive one, most likely sometime in February.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Let the seasonal madness begin.



Disclosure: I'm getting 50 free cards from Tiny Prints for writing about them. But, for reals, I was going to order them anyway because my sister-in-law always uses them and her cards are adorbs and since I need to save time this year I thought it would be a good alternative to handwriting everything, but then I saw the giveaway option on another blog and thought WTH!?!? (what the hell) and now I've actually lost all the time I saved by so thoroughly explaining myself here in this goddamn never-ending sentence. Fellow bloggers, you can do the same by going here.