Guest Blogger – Claire

Claire is a member of the Oops a Daisy Creative Team and has been journaling for 5 years.

Claire is Swedish and lives in France. Journaling has helped her organise her busy life, as she has 6 children and also runs her own business. She first discovered Oops a Daisy during lockdown in 2020.

I love everything about Christmas, but what I love most is finding ways to spread the Christmas magic. However, to be able to do that I need to be organised, hence a Christmas bullet journal. I started mine in 2021 with my second Christmas box from Oops a Daisy. It contained two super cute wire-bound notebooks, which I now use for my Christmas planning. This year I wanted to show you the spreads I’ve set up and talk a little about how I use them. I have divided the spreads into two categories: ‘Planning and Organisation’, and ‘Fun and Memories’.

Using Your Bullet Journal For Christmas Planning & Organisation

1. Cover Page

First of all, I create a yearly cover page. This helps me since it’s my third year planning for Christmas and it helps to divide the notebook up. Obviously, I had to use this year’s Christmas releases to decorate my cover page.

2. Elf on the Shelf

I have done the ‘Elf on the Shelf’ tradition since my oldest child was a baby, so I create a calendar spread to fill in my ideas BEFORE December. This way I’m not stressing every evening trying to find ideas on what pranks our elves could do.

3. Christmas Activities Planner

Next, I create a calendar spread to write down the activities I’d love for us to do, like meeting Santa, decorating the tree, making a gingerbread house, and celebrating Lucia (a Swedish tradition I do with my kids, even though we live in France). As you can see I’ve highlighted the weekends to make them easier to see at a glance.

4. Wish Lists

What would Christmas be without wish lists for Santa? Before sending out my children’s letters, I write down their wishes into these little boxes. This helps me to keep track, because I also buy some of their gifts from this wish list for birthdays that are in February. It also helps me prioritise some gifts because I can just look back and see if they’ve asked for the same things in the past.

5. Gift Lists

Then I create a spread to track the actual gifts I’m giving. This printable is from last year’s Christmas box where the OAD team had put together a Hybrid Planner with Christmas themed inserts. Since I love giving presents, I tend to give not only to my kids, but also friends and the caretakers of my kids. Using this printable speeds up the process and when items have been bought I can just tick them off.

6. Baking

Being someone who loves to bake, I need a spread where I can quickly glance at how much or how many cakes I should bake. The table in the spread below helps me easily see how much I need to bake in order to share my creations with my friends and family.

7. Christmas Cleaning & Decorating

I love to do a deep clean and de-clutter before Christmas, so I created this spread to help me track the tasks. I’ve also added a smaller box for decoration related tasks.

8. Meal Planning

Unlike my mum, who would spend most of Christmas in the kitchen preparing meals for us, I prefer to cook in advance and freeze so I can spend more time doing fun things! I prefer to freeze some food, such as salmon, for at least 48 hours, so I find it useful to create a spread and track what’s been made and how long everything has been in the freezer. Again, I use a simple table to do this.

9. Christmas Cards

I like creating my own cards and envelopes, so for that reason I’ve used the Alastair method to help me track which stage I’m at with every card. The Alastair method is a productivity tool used to track project-based tasks. Instead of a simple checkbox to indicate whether a task is completed, you can create several stages of completion. In this case I have a column for ‘Created’, ‘Envelope’, ‘Stamp’ and ‘Sent’. You can read more about the Alastair method here. If you like, you could also add a column to track if you’ve received a card from each person, but I prefer not to do this.

Bullet Journaling for Christmas Fun & Memories

1. Countdown to Christmas

I’ve been meaning to create an advent calendar in my Christmas bullet journal, but time always seems to slip away! However, instead of an advent calendar, I created this little count down light bulb garland to colour in and count down the days.

2. Recipes

I love baking and, besides my traditional recipes, I write down the recipes we’ve tried. This one is a brownie recipe which I’ve also decorated using some Oops a Daisy goodies and a photo of the brownies.

3. Doodles

I love doodling, even if it’s not something I do that much, however the holiday season gives me so much joy that doodling doesn’t seem so scary.

4. Memory Keeping

Christmas is the perfect season to take pictures of your loved ones, and why not keep those treasured memories inside your Christmas bullet journal? You can also write down any nice memories so you can look back year after year!

5. Preparing for Next Christmas

I started doing a shopping list last year, and it made my life so much easier! So be kind to future you and add a shopping list for things you’ll need next year like batteries, candles, spices, decorations, and advent calendars. This way you can get everything you need in advance, and can spend your precious time on other things instead. You could also add traditions you’d like to try out next year – This list can be whatever you need it to be!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about and seeing all the journal spreads I use to plan my Christmas, and I hope you found it useful. Don’t forget to share your Christmas spreads with the community in the Bullet Journal Squad Facebook group!

With this, I wish you a joyful holiday,
love Claire
xx