A Process for Gift Giving Ideas & Preparation!

Planning Ahead: Gifting & Creating!

Is it too early to be thinking about Mother’s Day?  It is over a month away, but it is not too early! We are “creatives”, and we love making gifts! We need to start thinking early about what we are making for holidays, birthdays, and other occasions where we might want to present a gift.  There needs to be time to actually make the gift!  How many times have you stayed up late trying to get a gift completed the day before an event?  Yes, I see all those hands! I’m guilty of that too and I just don’t like the pressure and stress it causes.  This year I want to start early and try to get ahead of the game. I want to show a process for gift ideas and preparation. I want to introduce you to a wonderful podcast and blog called, “The Lazy Genius Collective”.  Please go check her out because she has things on there that will change your life! Her name is Kendra Adachi, and she says, “be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t”.

First, “Name What Matters”—Kendra Adachi

• We all have gifts to either make or buy for friends and relatives so make a list of who those people are.  Can you give some of those people the same thing? Think in terms of this; I will start making table runners (put whatever item you want to make in place of this) and that will be my go-to gift for everyone’s birthday, or Christmas gifts this year. That can work with any item that you want to make or buy.  Decide once!
• Now make a list of potential gifts that you could and would like to make.  Maybe there are some gifts you want to buy. That’s okay too.  Decide now and try to stick to your decision so you don’t have to think about it again. It’s worth your time now to sit, think, and write down this information.
• This week I’m challenging you to make these lists!  You can keep it simple and just plan out the next few months or you can challenge yourself and go all the way to Christmas!  It’s not written in stone, so if something else catches your eye later that you want to add or substitute it’s fine. Remember the Christmas quilts I’m making for our boys this year?  I’ve already started and it’s going great.  I’m planning to have them completed by Thanksgiving.  I’ve given myself enough time so hopefully I’m not up all night at the last minute trying to finish them!
• Throughout the year I hope to give you many gift ideas you can make, so stay tuned!

Will You Take the Challenge?

I am going to be doing this right along with you if you decide to take the challenge. I’ll keep you informed on what I’ve come up with and my plan next week.  Please share what your process is because it may be something that will help the rest of us. I think the idea of creating this process is to help us think about a gift idea, decide once and be stress free, prepared, and not have to think about it again over and over for everyone!  I can’t wait to see what gift ideas you come up with and how many people you can group together with the same thing.

To help with this challenge I have a free “Gift List” worksheet that might help. 

On this sheet there are four columns: Date Needed, Gift Recipient, Gift Ideas, and a Completed column. The bottom has a Notes box. Use this box not only for general notes, but to list some of the gifts you want to make and purchase. I will pull from this box to fill in the Gift Ideas column. I hope you will find this useful. Just click on the button below to get your FREE gift list!

     Have a great week and let me know in the comments if you find this challenge and gift list helpful