My Five Favorite Tips to Tame the Holiday Crazy!

Can you believe that it’s already November? The holidays will be here before you know it and this year I’m determined to take as much stress as I can out of the season and truly enjoy it. If you’ve got the same mindset, you’ll love today’s post because I’m sharing my five favorite ways to tame the holiday crazy! My friends Pam of Simple Details, Lisa of Shine Your Light, Jennifer of Dimples & Tangles, and our guest hosts, Christy & Amy of 11 Magnolia Lane are all sharing their tips too! I loved Christy and Amy’s holiday homes last year (isn’t Amy’s tree from her tour {here} beautiful?) so I’m looking forward to their tips about how they made their homes so gorgeous while keeping the stress at bay!

Ready to go? (post includes some affiliate links – full disclosure statement {here}):

Choose Accessories That Easily Transition From the Fall Through the Holidays

If you decorate your home for each season and the holidays, it can be a whole lot of decorating and redecorating to go from fall to Halloween to Thanksgiving and finally to Christmas decor. To help tame the crazy, choose accessories that transition beautifully from fall through the holidays with just some quick tweaking. For example,  I have two lantern trios (found {here}) that I put on our front porch in early fall and continue to use throughout the rest of the year. When the seasons or holidays change, I simply do a little tweaking that includes a two-minute ribbon swap along with changing out what they’re filled with. This fall, I tied a black + burlap ribbon on the two large lanterns and filled them with white baby boo pumpkins:

and in a few weeks I’ll switch out the ribbon to something more festive and replace the pumpkins with ornaments similar to last year:

It takes less time to decorate and you end up with less seasonal “stuff” that you have to find a place to store. 

Scroll and click/tap images below to shop my lanterns & the rest of my porch:

Pillage Your Own Backyard for Holiday Greenery

Instead of running around all over town buying greenery to deck the halls of your home, save some time and holiday stress by clipping greenery from your yard instead. You don’t have to have anything fancy like magnolia leaves to decorate (although if you do, I’m jealous!) – it can be as simple as some branches from an evergreen tree like I use every year to decorate our front door along with these gorgeous bells (available {here} and {here}):

Branches from bushes in your landscaping (like simple boxwood bushes that so many people have) totally work too! I purposely make sure my husband doesn’t trim this one row of bushes in our backyard late in the season so that they have branches long enough for me to clip when the holidays come around:

Scroll and click/tap images below to shop my front door bells & holiday entry:

Use Time-Saving Tricks To Send Your Holiday Cards

I hand addressed, wrote (including personal notes), and mailed traditional Christmas cards for years and while I loved connecting with friends and family that I don’t get to see as often as I’d like, it was crazy time consuming and to be honest, totally stressed me out. I didn’t want to give it up but also didn’t want to go the route of sticky label addresses and preprinted cards that I just signed and slapped a stamp on. I found out about Paperless Post about five years ago and it’s been a life saver. It’s an e-card system where you choose your card (I always choose one I can upload a family photo to), personalize it, and design everything from the card background to the envelope style and even the pattern lining the envelope (there are some gorgeous options!):

You then add your recipient names and email addresses and your card gets emailed to them. When they open the email, they’ll see an image of an envelope addressed to them and when they click on it, the envelope turns around, opens, and the card pops out (including a personal note if you write one!). What I like best about the way Paperless Post is set up is that there’s an opportunity for the recipient to respond to your card so after my cards get sent out, I always get a bunch of emails from friends and family that I haven’t heard from in forever. I never thought I’d be a Christmas e-card type person but I love it! 

If e-cards aren’t for you, a great option for saving time and stress when sending traditional cards is to take advantage of shops like Minted that offer free recipient addressing. When you order your cards from them, they will print your envelope addresses at no charge (and I love that the design of their envelopes coordinates with the design of the cards!).  You can read more about it {here} and check out Minted’s holiday card options {here}. These are a few of my favorites this season:

Stock Up on Hostess Gifts Ahead of Time

The holidays tend to be filled with parties and gatherings and while you don’t want to show up empty handed, there is no such thing as a “quick trip” to the store when it’s close to Christmas and the stores (and parking lots) are packed. Eliminate the last minute “I need a hostess gift” panic and stock up ahead of time! One of my favorite hostess gifts is a pretty tea towel paired with a treat – it could be anything from a favorite bottle of wine to a bottle of gourmet syrup or local honey: 

Bonus points if the treat is something you and your family regularly use/eat and love! You can check out {this post} for more ideas of hostess gifts you can order online to build up your stash before the party season begins. And if you’re looking for pretty seasonal tea towels to stock up on, these are some of my faves:

Wrap as You Go (and Then Use Your Presents to Decorate!)

You’ve probably heard me say it before but I LOVE wrapping presents! For several years now I’ve gotten my wrapping paper early and the wrapped a lot of my presents as I’ve bought them. That way I don’t have the stress of a huge pile of presents that I need to get wrapped right before Christmas and as a bonus, my wrapped presents are a simple, beautiful way to decorate my home for the holidays. Some of my favorite spots for wrapped presents are piled on the corner chair in our dining room,

the ottoman in our living room, and our family room bookshelves:

Scroll and click/tap images below to shop my family room:

I’ve actually got a post coming up in just a few weeks sharing my favorite ideas for wrapping gifts (plus you’ll die over the gorgeous Christmas wrapping paper I found) so be on the lookout for it! If you’re not already subscribed to Driven by Decor, you can subscribe {here} so you don’t miss it or any of my other posts leading up to the holidays!

Now that I’ve shared my five favorite tips to tame the holiday crazy, it’s time to hop around and check out everyone else’s tips too:

Pam – Simple Details

Jennifer – Dimples & Tangles

Lisa – Shine Your Light

Christy & Amy – 11 Magnolia Lane

And if you’re a fan of our My Five Favorites series and want to check out some of my other My Five Favorites posts, {this post} from last year on My Fifteen Favorite Christmas Wish List Gifts is a great one to help you get a jump on your shopping!