Christmas is less than five weeks from today. You still have plenty of time, but it's time to pick up the pace.

• Work on finishing up your Christmas cards. You want them in the mail no later than December 15.
• Start your shopping in earnest. Decide how you shop best: a marathon or a bit at a time and schedule the time you need. Ideally, you should have at least half of your gifts bought before December 7. That should include all gifts that must be shipped.
• Mail gifts that have a distance to travel (anything outside the US).
• If you have some time, wrap the presents you’ve already bought.
• Once you have concluded your Thanksgiving celebrations, you may wish to start your decorating. You may find it easier to do a little decorating each day. It breaks up the work and you get the joy of watching your house slowly being filled with Christmas.
• Begin finalizing your menus for Christmas entertaining as well as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
• Make your New Year’s Eve reservations.
• If you are making any gifts, put in serious amounts of time this week ( great thing to do while you recover from Thanksgiving overeating and while watching tv). The closer Christmas comes, the harder it will be to find large blocs of time you can dedicate to crafting, so use what you can!