It’s December! And I am determined to have a peaceful, simple, memorable month. Not one filled with stress, busyness, and exhaustion.

With this in mind, I’m going to be holding a 21-Day Challenge here on MoneySavingMom.com. For the next 21 days, I’ll be blogging about how to have a simple, memorable Christmas.

I’m not blogging about this because I have all the answers (believe me, I don’t!), but because I want to pursue peace instead of chaos this year. 🙂 It should be an interesting journey — and I’ll be sharing my mistakes, lessons learned, and successes along the way.

Would you like to join me? Here’s how it will work: Each morning, there will be a post with a few simple projects for you to complete, if you’d like to join me. And each evening, I’ll post my progress in completing those projects and how I’m doing at fulfilling my goal of having a calm Christmas season.

Day 1 Project

1. Download a copy of Celebrating & Savoring a Simple Christmas (see below). It’s FREE!

2. Read the introduction of Celebrating & Savoring a Simple Christmas. Write down a mission statement for yourself for this Christmas season. This should be more along the lines of what you hope to experience this Christmas season, not specific things you want to accomplish.

Come back here at 9 p.m. EST tonight and read my goals for this Christmas and share yours in the comments or blog link-up.

Get Your FREE Copy of Celebrating & Savoring A Simple Christmas

Psst! Be sure to download your FREE Christmas ebook. It’s my gift to you this year — and you’ll need it if you want to participate in this challenge!

To get a copy, just fill out your name and email address here. Then, click on the link in your inbox to confirm your email address. You’ll be emailed a download link as soon as you do so. It’s my gift to you this year — and you’ll need it if you want to participate in this challenge!

Today’s project was to read the introduction to Celebrating & Savoring a Simple Christmas (Did you sign up for your free copy yet? If not, click here and fill out the form to be emailed a copy.) and to write down a mission statement for yourself for this Christmas season.

Here’s my mission statement:

This December, I want to slow down, savor life, and focus on being present not perfect. I want to take time to notice the little things instead of rushing from one to-do to the next. I want stop, listen, and look instead of being so busy and focused that I miss the moments.

What’s your mission statement for December? Share it with us in the comments. And if you’re blogging about this challenge, I’d love it if you left a link to your blog post, too. Let’s encourage each other to simplify and savor this season more.

Get Your FREE Copy of Celebrating & Savoring A Simple Christmas

Psst! Be sure to download your FREE Christmas ebook. It’s my gift to you this year — and you’ll need it if you want to participate in this challenge!

To get a copy, just fill out your name and email address here. Then, click on the link in your inbox to confirm your email address. You’ll be emailed a download link as soon as you do so. It’s my gift to you this year — and you’ll need it if you want to participate in this challenge!

Today’s project was to read Chapter 1 of Celebrating & Savoring a Simple Christmas (Did you sign up for your free copy yet? If not, click here and fill out the form to be emailed a copy.) and to determine your Christmas budget.

Our Christmas Budget

We typically start planning for Christmas spending halfway through the year. Since we use a cash envelope system, we just start socking away most of our gift cash for Christmas. In addition, we also save up our Swagbucks Amazon gift cards to use for Christmas presents. And I keep my eyes open for other ways to earn free gift cards or products that would be good for gifting.

By the time December rolls around, I usually have a nice stash of gift cash plus gift cards to use for gifts and this becomes our Christmas budget. By doing it this way, we don’t have to dip into any of our regular savings or other money to pay for Christmas–we just have to plan ahead and then look for deals to stretch that money as far as possible.

This year, I’ve saved up around $250 in our gift envelope plus Amazon credit that I’ll be using for gifts. We’re scaling back on Christmas presents this year and just drawing names for our extended family members, so this should make it pretty easy to stick with our budget.

Jesse has a separate cash stash that he uses to buy gifts for me and our kids for Christmas (most of it is from his blow money!), so I only buy a few things for the kids. I found a couple of deals on Black Friday that I snatched up, so other than stockings, I’m done with their shopping!

Did you figure out your Christmas budget? Share it with us in the comments. And if you’re blogging about this challenge, I’d love it if you left a link to your blog post, too. Let’s encourage each other to simplify and savor this season more.