Dear Friends,

Today is Plan and Play Day. Have you updated your Christmas shopping list? A big part of your Holiday purchasing and gift giving is to keep track of your budget. You don’t want to spend months after Christmas paying off credit card bills. Set a budget and stick to it. Update your gift list each time you make a purchase.

If you haven’t started your Christmas cards yet, start them today. Start with checking your mailing list for updates. If you print labels, go ahead and do that. Then you can start signing the cards a little at a time. You can spread this out over a couple of weeks; you don’t have to do a mega Christmas card session at one time.

If you enclose a family picture in your Christmas card, get those done this week or over the weekend at the latest. You need to get them ordered in ready to pop into your cards.

Do any of you write a Christmas card letter? I used to do them when my children were little, but I have not done one in a while. I like reading them from others, but it gets harder to put them together as the family grows and moves into adulthood.

In my small town, we have a special stamp we can use on our Christmas cards that says, “Bethlehem, North Carolina.” It’s a star-shaped stamp, and it is one of the things that I enjoy doing each year on my Christmas cards.

We are coming close to the end of the month, and we have been practicing the habit of menu planning this month. How do you feel about your progress in this area? I did my weekly menu planning, and while we switched around a couple of meals, I think it went well.

What have you learned this month about menu planning?

Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.

Your Zone Mission for today is to detail vacuum the Living Room or Family Room.

My menu plan for Tuesday is spaghetti and a salad.

Have a blessed day!