Christmas in Texas

Days
'Til
Christmas!

Holiday Hints Index

Holiday Hints To Keep You Sane

Makin' a List...

• Building Christmas Memories
• Save Holiday Dollars Online
• Keeping Santa's List Manageable

Every New Year's Day as you're cleaning up the holiday mess, you swear things will be different next year. You make resolutions to shop early, to plan ahead, to update your Christmas card list before December 20th, to make lists with everyone's size and favorite color, to make real cut-out cookies instead of buying them at a warehouse store, to stay within your budget by purchasing meaningful, not necessarily expensive gifts.

But by October, you forget all your good intentions; you forget how exhausted you allowed yourself to get, how cranky the kids were after being rushed through department stores and listening to you gripe about waiting forever for a single parking space at the mall. You forget how badly you overspent and how the kids didn't seem all that excited about the gifts you splurged on.

This feature hopes to spare you some of that anguish by offering you practical tools for holiday preparation as well as ideas to consider as you're making preparations. The menu on the left will be updated frequently with more helpful ideas for the holiday. If you have an idea or article you'd like to share, please email me with the article and permission to publish on this website. Send only your original work, nothing borrowed or copied from other sources.