In looking back over five years of writing these wish list posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to check many marvelous things off my list! It may have taken five years for some of them (ahem, I’m looking at you, pretty puff vest), but still :) As has become something of a tradition, here are a few things I wouldn’t mind receiving this year — here’s hoping they’ll inspire your gifting or getting!

A. How to Celebrate Everything | Not only do I think it’s a perfect gift to give, but I’d love to receive a copy myself! Jenny is a gal after my own heart.
B. Skipper printed popover | I have heard nothing but fabulous things about Lilly’s popovers, and I think these colors would make me smile every time I pulled them on!
C. Bean boots | I haven’t had a pair of winter boots since we moved to the South, but I think it’s time to restock. It doesn’t get better than these.
D. Platinum Navajo sandals | My beloved Jacks finally bit the dust after almost four years of near-daily wear… so I’d like to replace them with exactly the same thing :)
E. Wicked good slippers | Ditto to the above. I wore my last pair of moccs into the ground and have finally conceded that it might be time to replace them. Again, it doesn’t get better than these guys.
F. The Livegiving Home | I just listened to an interview with Sally this week and she seems so wonderful! Would love to learn more from her.
G. Letter board | These things are like the Tickle Me Elmo of Christmas 2016 – constantly desired, constantly out of stock. I will get one eventually :)
H. A canoe | No, I don’t expect to get a canoe this Christmas (they are shockingly expensive!). However, I do think it would be so fun to have one for family adventures for years to come — so something to save for! (And then probably buy from Craigslist :))
I. Barrette | Since I am notoriously bad at doing anything with my hair, I’m hoping this pretty accessory might help glam up even the most basic of styles.
J. Throw pillows | Ever since we got a (kind of wild) new living room rug, I’ve wanted to tone down our patterned couch pillows. I think these pale blue velvet ones would be perfect, and the price is incredible!

What’s on the top of your list this year? I always get inspiration from what others are wishing for!

As I hoped it would be, November was full of so much love — and, lucky me, December looks to be the same way. From a quick work trip to Sea Island that the J’s get to accompany me on to another epic road trip for a Connecticut Christmas (this time overnight – hold me) to a brunch reunion planned with all of our high school friends, I am grateful. But you know what the best kind of love is? A tiny baby who came to love all of us two thousand years ago, so that we could love others. I’m making sinking that into my heart the priority this month, even as I work on the goals below!

P.S. I love using the PowerSheets to track my professional goals (and sometimes personal ones, too – I shared a little bit about my process last year). The 2017 workbook is truly awesome!

Revisiting my goals for November:
Vote!
Make reservations for June’s baptism celebration
Buy June’s baptism gift
Choose our outfits for family photos (sneak peek above!)
Finish our will
Post my guide to the Triangle (more progress has been made! :))
Begin crafting for June’s birthday party! (Started a brainstorming doc, bought some supplies on Black Friday, and designed the invitations last night!)

December goals:
— Design and print our Christmas newsletter + send out our Christmas cards with love (and personal notes!)
— Send invitations for J’s first birthday party (!)
— Give away as much as we spend on Christmas gifts in our church’s Christmas Eve offering
— Love on our trash and recycling guys, my post office peeps, and June’s teachers. (Homemade toffee will likely be in the mix.)
— Finish our will (This is it, people. Really. It’s happening. It is.)
— Go out to dinner with John for our 2016 review + celebration
— Have lots and lots of fun celebrating Christmas with our families and friends in Connecticut

As a reminder, here are my 2016 guideposts. If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!

Without a doubt, one of the best parts of having children is reliving the magic of your own childhood, but through a new lens. This time, we get to be the ones creating the magic, introducing our sweet babies to some of our favorite experiences that produced our most vivid memories!

Truthfully, it can actually be a bit overwhelming when you start thinking that it’s your responsibility to make everything “magic,” but I’m comforted when I remember that some of the experiences I loved best from growing up were far from perfect. The one thing they all had in common, however, was that they were rooted in time with my family–and that’s a kind of magic I’m confident I can create. Here are a few of my favorite memories from childhood, and things we love doing now…

Growing up, I danced in the Nutcracker every year, so I started listening to Christmas music in August! The opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s prologue still make my heart race a little with excitement.

My family cut down our tree at the most idyllic farm. (This one, for those in Connecticut/Rhode Island!) I remember eating buttery springerle cookies and warming my hands on a paper cup of hot chocolate while we traipsed through the yellow fields looking for the perfect Fraser fir.

Every night, even if it was just for a brief moment between dance class and basketball practice, all five of us would gather to pin a felt ornament on the tree of our Advent calendar, made by my Dad’s cousins before I was born. A few years ago, Kate made Kim and I exact replicas for our own homes, down to the felt colors and sequin placement.

On Christmas Eve, we’d eat ham, baked beans, and coleslaw, then attend the seven o’clock candlelight service at our church. Since it was usually freezing in Connecticut, we’d wear our fancy wool coats with the velvet bows.

On Christmas morning, my sisters and I would squeeze across the top of the stairs while my Dad turned on the Christmas music, “checked to make sure that Santa had come,” and then gave the okay for us to race toward the tree in our pajamas. Opening stockings for our family of five usually took about an hour and a half, after which we’d eat gooey, cinnamon-y monkey bread before moving on to presents.

I could go on… but let’s chat about 2016 :)

My absolute favorite North Carolina tradition is going to the Christmas concert at Duke Chapel (pictured here). Getting to sing along to my favorite carols in that beautiful space is nothing short of magic.

We love our town’s Christmas parade, which winds through our historic main street at twilight, with high school marching bands, dance schools, jump rope teams (!), and floats from local churches. We always bring our own peppermint hot chocolate in thermoses, and have a particular hilltop spot we’ve secured for the last few years!

We love gathering with a few friends and family members to carol at a local assisted living home. The babies are always extremely popular :) Everyone brings their holiday party leftovers for a cobbled-together feast afterward at the Ray’s.

Now that there are several nieces and nephews on each side, matching Christmas jams are a thing! There was a long text chain on the Thomas side to decide on the perfect pair, but we just snapped up this one.

In addition to attending our church’s candlelight Christmas Eve service (still the thing I look forward to most every year), our Christmas Eve giving has become an important part of our family’s story.

There’s so much more — the ornaments John and I exchange every year, our end of year celebration dinner, the treats we shower on the post man, teachers, and other friends who help us throughout the year, sending Christmas cards — but I’ll stop there, for now :)

With that, I’d love to hear: what are your most vivid memories from Christmas as a child? What are your favorite parts of the holiday season now? Please tell me below!!

Around this time every year, I start to feel a little anxious about the coming year — specifically the finances of the coming year. By November, we’ve usually started talking about things like vacations we’d like to take, purchases we want to make, and savings goals we’d like to hit. We’ve submitted our pledge to our church. We know what our childcare expenses are going to be. But I don’t yet have a map of how it’s all going to fit together, and so I start worrying: will we be able to pay for everything we want to do? Will we have the money to take these vacations we’re talking about? Will we need to trim our budget, or will we get to expand it?

I hate that anxious feeling. And I think that’s how I’d feel every month if I didn’t have a budget, because a budget is a plan. It reassures me that I’ve taken care of everything that I need to, and that if I stick to the budget, I am free to spend money without guilt, I don’t need to worry about paying bills, and I can rest assured that I’m making progress on all of my savings goals.

I LOVE feeling like that. So this weekend, John and I sat down and made a plan for 2017. We do this every year, and I’d encourage y’all to try it, too! Here’s what we did.

We started by setting aside about two hours, after June was in bed so we wouldn’t be interrupted. We opened up a fresh Google doc and copied and pasted the structure of our budget (formulas, categories, etc. – you can read more about that here). Then we started adding in numbers:

First, we entered in any fixed amounts: numbers that we can’t change or don’t plan to change, on both the income and expense side. A few examples: our salaries, 401k contributions, taxes, and our mortgage.

Then, we moved to the “slightly flexible” categories: ones where we could make changes, but there’s not a ton of wiggle room and it would require a lot of effort. A few examples: childcare, cable and internet, charitable giving, and groceries.

Finally, we enter in what we’d like to spend in the flexible categories. A few examples: vacation, dining out, gifts, and clothing.

Depending on whether or not you’ve kept a budget in the past, it will be more or less challenging to pull these numbers. Since we have a lot of data to look back on, we were able to simply plug in a lot of numbers from 2016. Still, we do talk through each category to see if any adjustments are needed for the upcoming year: Are we due for new tires? Will we be flying more than usual? Will we be buying lots of wedding gifts? If you haven’t kept a budget in the past, look back on a month or two of receipts or credit card statements to help you estimate.

Now it’s time to look at the bottom line: With all of your projected income and expenses taken into account, is your budget for the year in the black or in the red?

If it’s in the black: great! When we have a less than $1,000 surplus, we leave our budget as-is, because that’s a small enough amount to us. However, if the surplus were more than $1,000, I’d want to assign that money somewhere (savings, giving, or an expense category), because the goal is for every dollar to have a job.

This year, when we first did the math, our projection was in the red. But no need to panic! This is why we forecast a budget, so we’re not realizing this next October, or whenever our bank accounts run dry.

If you’re in the red, too, it’s time to go back over all of those flexible and semi-flexible categories with a fine-tooth comb, and talk through any options for cutting your expenses. For us, we talked about reducing our vacation, home, clothing, personal care, and childcare expenses. We also decided to forgo one month of extra payment on our mortgage in order to make room for the additional money we want to give to our church’s building campaign next year. These are tough decisions, but I firmly believe it’s better to make them now, when you’re in control, rather than when you’re scrambling and your options are limited. Cut, cut, cut until your budget is balanced.

Once your numbers come out even, congratulations! You have a financial road map for 2017, and it’s going to be an awesome year!!

Your next step is to set up a system to track your budget every day, week, or month, like through a Google doc, an online system like Mint or YNAB, or the envelope system.

You’ll also want to make plans to check in periodically to see how you’re pacing – we do that every two months. After all, a budget is a plan, but plans can change. We adjust our budget throughout the year if our circumstances change or if we decide we want to prioritize one category over another. That’s totally fine to do, as long as the income and expenses balance out in the end!

I’d love to hear, friends: do you do any budget planning before a new year begins? How do you track your budget? Does talking about a budget give you the heebie-jeebies? Are there any money topics I can help you with in upcoming posts? I have a few brainstormed, but I would LOVE to hear what might be most helpful to you!!

P.S. More marvelous money posts: paying off debt, preparing financially for a baby, and paying for a car in cash.