The holiday season - roughly that time between Halloween and New Years - can be a wonderful time, but all too often it becomes one crisis after another as we try to fit travel, family gatherings, decorating, gifts, and elaborate meals into our already packed schedules.

Most articles that promise to take the stress out of your holiday season simply boil down to "do less." For me, that doesn't work. I don't really want to cut out visits with family or elaborate meals. For me, those are the things that make the holidays different from the rest of the year. Yes, they are a lot of work, but stripping them out would take away some of the magic too. There has to be a middle ground between baking sugar cookies at 3am and eating take-out on Thanksgiving.

The key to a smooth holiday season is planning. Take some time now to put every event from Thanksgiving dinner to the kids' holiday concerts to gift shopping and volunteer work on your calendar. Once you know what you'll be doing in the next couple of months, you can decide what you'll need to do to prepare. You may need to decide on a menu for Thanksgiving dinner, and perhaps make travel plans or arrangements for visiting relatives.

Once you have those things arranged, you can go to the next level and make your shopping and to-do lists. Be sure to store all this valuable information in your household notebook! The last thing you want to do is lose all your hard work in a pile of junk mail and math worksheets.

When you have a to-do list for each event, go through and make a note of things that can be done ahead of time, combined with other tasks, or delegated. Shopping trips are a great example of this - when you're out buying gifts, make one extra stop for nonperishable food and decor items. You'll spend less time overall than if you made several separate trips.

As you're reviewing your to-do lists, look for things that you can delegate. Does an older child enjoy baking? Let them whip up the sugar cookies for a younger sibling's class party while you work on homemade gifts (check back in next week for some great ideas!) or plan the family trip to visit the Grandparents. While you supervise the baking and work on your own tasks, you'll find that you also get to spend some time just talking with your child - three great things done at once!

Check back in next week for more budget-friendly Holiday tips.

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