I cannot believe next week is Thanksgiving! Fall has flown by, and it has been super fun, busy and fabulous!

I’ve already begun to think about Christmas. I want to get a head start this year. My birthday is December 16, so my goal is to have all my Christmas shopping done by at least then (hopefully WAY earlier.)

Since I’ve been obsessed with Pinterest lately, I made a calendar to hang on the fridge that is marked with all these holiday crafts and activities that I want to do with my friends and family. It’s really quite pathetically hilariously.
Activities include holiday baking, caroling, random acts of kindness, deadlines for having the Christmas tree up and cards out, etc.

Can you tell I’m excited for the holidays?

Also on my holiday calendar is this 5K. A couple of my girlfriends and I are  running it on December 8. You dress up in holiday themed costumes and tie jingle bells to your shoelaces, plus proceeds go to the Arthritis Foundation. More info on the 5K can be found here.

Tonight is also the Holiday Open House in Downtown Painesville. I interned with the organization a few summers ago. The event features local businesses all around downtown and you walk around and get your “passport” stamped at all the places listed on it. Once you have visited all the places you enter your passport into three raffle gift baskets. It’s a great way to support the local area, plus there’s free refreshments at all the places, a visits from Santa and Christmas carolers. It’s going to be a really fun night. More on this event can be found here.

I hope you are just as excited as I am for the holidays. I also hope you get inspired to be festive and spend time doing fun activities with your friends and family. More importantly I hope you all realize during the next month or so just how lucky we all are to be able to celebrate the holidays. I hope we all learn to count our blessings and treat others kindly not just during Christmas, but all year round.

I’ll leave you with this Christmas classic.