How to Plan for the Holiday Season with Chrystal Evans Hurst

Hi, I'm Jesse. I'm Chrystal Hurst's husband. No, I don't want to be doing this. Actually, I don't want to be doing this, but I love my wife, so I'm helping her out. She has no voice right now. I already know she goes live every Monday. I don't know what she's talking about and I don't want to know, but I'm here to help her out. She takes the lives from Monday, edits them down, and shares them every Sunday night. She does not want you to be stressed this holiday season. But she wants me to be stressed this holiday season. So she's going to talk a little bit about how you can plan ahead. Yes, please. Yes. Talk about how you can plan ahead, please. So I won't have to do this anymore. Okay. Keep going. So you can you can enjoy your holiday season. I'll be enjoying my holiday season with my wife. Enjoy the video, dog. And first of all, I want y'all to know I was watching Saturday football, college football, when she called me to ask me to do this. I don't want to be doing this. Enjoy your day. Thank you. That's a wrap.

This is your official reminder to get ready for Thanksgiving. This is it. This is it. This is your official reminder for you people that are planners but not planners. You think about it, but you don't do anything. This is your reminder. This is the week. Where everything you need to get from the store is in the store. This is the week when if you're gonna order that cake from that bakery or that pie from your friend down the street, this is the week when she can take your order. This is the week when if you need to order that turkey or order that ham or get that, get that Green Bird turkey from Tyler, because that's my favorite turkey. I make a turkey and I like my, my turkey's amazing. I do all the things because I couldn't decide the first year I made a turkey how to do it, so I did all of it. I, I rubbed it down, I injected it, I basted it, I brined it, I, I did, I did everything, I did everything. And now that I don't want to do all that, my family's like, no, you cannot do all that because now that's the turkey that we love. So anyway, I make a turkey. I've gotten up to 18 pounds, y'all, 20 pounds. I'm like doing the thing. So I make a turkey, but I also, I also buy a Greenberg turkey because that's the turkey I like. This is the week that you should order your things. That's what I'm telling you. There is no reason, there is no reason to wait because if you wait until next week, you're going to be going on the tour de store. What do I mean by that? You're gonna have to go to 5 stores to get all the things you want. This is the week to go to Costco and to stock up on the sugar. This is the week to go to Sam's and stock up on the flour. This is the week you should have started like 3 weeks ago, every week you went to the store, getting some extra butter. This is the week if you ain't stocked up before, now go on in hard and get yourself 12 blocks of butter. Like, this is the week, because next week, with the scarcity that we've had at the store since COVID it's not even about Thanksgiving week anymore. Thanksgiving week, you better be planning to go to somebody else's house. It's over. You're not gonna get what you want. This is the week where you actually have choices, okay? So I want to encourage you to make your menu, okay? Make your menu, decide what you're cooking, do the potluck or whatever. This is the week you've officially been reminded, okay? You've officially been reminded. I want to tell you that I, every year— my mother, every year, would write down what she fixed, what she cooked. She would write down after the dinner whether people ate it or not, so she would know next year if she needed to make more or less. She would know next year based on who came, because, you know, as grandkids get older, they eat more. So she would keep a list And then she would update or change the list as needed. If she tried a new recipe, she'd make a note. Did they like it or not? Because she built next year's list on this year's reality. Ooh, that'll preach. Goodness gracious, that just hit me. So I want to just say, make your list, decide what you want to have. Go ahead, if you're the coordinator of the potluck, go ahead and make the list so people can sign up for their dish. If you know they're going to be late and you know you want to eat it too, have that person who's going to be late tell them one, Like, this is the week you make your plans, okay? Because the holidays can be stressful, but there are some things we don't have to allow to be stressful. So I, I literally went to the bakery yesterday because yesterday was First Sunday, and I got a cake from one of my favorite bakers. I have 3 bakeries that I go to, and I went to one of them yesterday. And while I was there, I also bought 4 slices of pie. 4. I bought a key lime pie, I bought a sweet potato pie slice, I bought a chocolate icebox pie, and I buttermilk pie. Why? Because I've never actually eaten any of her pies. So I brought a slice home of each of those pies so I could decide if I'm going to farm out some of my pie making this year. And so last night I was taste testing a bite of each pie and then sharing those pies with other people who wanted them because I had people here for First Sunday. Why? Because I'm planning ahead. When I went to the bakery yesterday and I asked the lady, um, how far are y'all booking out now for cakes and pies? She said, right now we're a week out, which is why I'm telling you If you don't want to be in the Thanksgiving rush, figure it out this week and get your shopping done, your orders done this week, or at least start it. At least start it, okay? Don't go to the store on a Saturday at 12 if you can help it. Go when they first open. Go early in the morning at 6 or 7 if you go to Walmart. You know, pick your time wisely, right? Get something in your ears, listen to a podcast, enjoy the trip, load up. Tell your family before you get home, listen, I'm doing a big shop. That's what I used to call it when my kids were small. I'll call it a big shop. We're going to do big shop, because when I get home and I honk the horn, all of y'all, all of y'all are coming out and bringing things in. And I would have a system. I would say anything refrigerated goes on the kitchen island, anything that is not refrigerated goes on the floor, because that way I can quickly put up the— listen, I had a whole system because I was like, it's 5 of y'all and I'm not doing all this by myself. In fact, I would actually tell my husband— I got really wise— I would tell my husband, when I'm, when I'm in the checkout line, because we live 10 minutes from the Costco, when I'm in the checkout line, I'm gonna call you. Can you put the boys in the car, bring them up here? Y'all come in and get a soda, you know, give them a little something for their trouble. But then it's y'all's job to unload this and put this in the car— to put it in the car, unload the basket and put in the car. Then we're gonna all drive home and y'all are all gonna unload the car because I know how I put things away. Okay, yes, Chrystal Hurst, the Ninja Planner. So this is what you need to do. Now, if you only have to bring one dish, okay, if you only have to bring one dish, this is My advice to you, if that dish you can't make that in your sleep, practice now. Don't wait to find the recipe until the day before Thanksgiving and then you don't have enough sweet potatoes, so you don't bring enough sweet potatoes to the meal. Buy your stuff early, but also practice. Make a smaller version. Don't practice on us for Thanksgiving. Okay? If you want to try a new recipe, try it now. Don't, don't wait until Thanksgiving. Like, if you've never made a buttermilk pie or a chess pie, try it now. Please make it, take it to work, give it away. Make sure the recipe that you got off of Allrecipes is foolproof. This is your season to plan ahead. Where am I going with this, y'all? Where am I going with this? Let me tell you, let me tell you what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is this is how you should operate in your life. You do not have to be a Maestro planner. You don't have to have, you know, what do I have over here, my little, you know, yes, a planner is amazing. I love planners. I've been buying planners since I was 18, right? And I changed the planner thinking it's the planner. No, it's me. The planner is only the tool. I don't think you have to be a planner like, you know, like with a stick up your butt. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying you can be a very spontaneous person who still refuses to get caught with your pants down. You can still be a spontaneous person who refuses to be in a situation that is stressful. You can be spontaneous and try a new recipe, but I will tell you, like I heard a guy named Carlos Whitaker say on a podcast— I was listening to an Andy Stanley podcast and they were talking about the planning of their services and how they were criticized for their Sunday services. North Point Church in Atlanta, they were criticized because they would say— people said, well, you know, your services are so planned that the Spirit can't move. And Carlos Whitaker said, No, the Spirit does move. He just moves in our meeting on Tuesday. So I just believe that even if you are a spontaneous person, that in this season when you are working with limited resources, limited time, limited groceries, you want to do something that makes you and everybody else not stressed out. So this is a life lesson. So here's what I want to say. Every year I say this: you do not wait until January the 3rd after you've recovered from Watch Night service or the club, whatever you did on New Year's Eve. You do not wait until January the 3rd to think about what you want to do in 2024. You can, there's nothing wrong with it, but you don't have to do it that way. This is the time of year when you can feel it, ingest it. You're going to have holiday time, you're going to have time off of work. This is the time where you actually have the bandwidth to go, let me look back at my year. Every Christmas, my mother would put— she would, back in the day when you printed out your photos, she would print out all of her photos. If she had not already printed them out, she would print them all, or she would finish the printing. And every Christmas, she would sit down and put the photos in photo albums. The reason why We have such amazing photos for our family because my mother was religious about every Christmas printing the photos and putting them in those good old magnetic photo albums. Here I am trying to scrapbook, trying to digital photo, trying to do all the fancy things. And my youngest son is like, is that a picture of me as a baby on the wall? Do I say yes? I say yes. Am I lying? I'm lying. That ain't him because I never put a picture of him. He's number 5. So I got to get my act together. The point is, my mother religiously did it the way she did it. Not fancy, but it was done. She did it at the end of every year during the holiday season. She would make herself a cup of hot apple cider, she'd make herself a hot cup of cocoa, she put on the Christmas movies, and she would sit down and put the photos away. Why? Because that was also her way to remember the year. Some of y'all need to go back through your photos on your phone. Inner Circle, don't forget we had a teaching about organizing your digital files and how to get those pictures out of your phone. But I'm not talking about the pictures. I'm talking about the room you make at the end of your year to look back, because it's in looking back— number one, it'll give you a feeling of satisfaction. Look at what I did! I forgot that happened. And if you're feeling really bad about your life right now, that your life is kind of sucky, if you look back at your life, you'll realize that the whole year hasn't been that way. It'll give you the opportunity to practice gratitude for what has gone well, what you forgot that you did. It's been a long year, what you've come through. And it will also give you the opportunity to realize man, I'm the same size I was in January of 2023, and I said this was the year. It will allow you to realize that in every one of the pictures that you have of your family, you're not in it. That I actually need to remember not just to take the pictures but to actually be with my people. It'll remind you that you spent time with friends, or that there's a certain friend who's not in the picture that you need to focus on for the next year. Whether you look at your photos, whether you look at your journal, or whether you simply look at your life What do I want to accomplish? What is the major thing in my life? And have I done it? Am I doing it? Am I working on it? Y'all, I had to take a break from my piano lessons, and I'm sitting here going, this is the time of year last year when I was talking about starting piano lessons, and I did, but I had to stop. There was too much in and out of town. It was reasonable. I meant to go back in October. I haven't yet. So it's a reminder to me, oh, piano is on my list. These are— this is on my list of things I'm going to do with my life. Because my Aunt Louise, at 90, said one of the great regrets of her life life was never playing the piano like she wanted to. Well, that's not going to be one of mine. And she encouraged me to keep doing it. This is the time of year when I can look at my life and go, you know what, get back to it, Chrystal Hurst. It's time to pick up the phone and call them and tell them you're coming. This is the time of year where you look. You don't have to wait until the clock strikes mid— strikes midnight to say, what do I want to do with 2024? You get to do that. Now. So I encourage you to start early on your Thanksgiving meal prep. Start early on the new recipe that you want to try. If the chess pie— I've tried the same chess pie recipe, y'all, for 3 years. It tastes amazing. The consistency isn't right. There's something about my oven and the chemical reaction that's not happening. I need to try a new recipe, but I don't want to give up, so I need to try that before so that I don't have a soupy chess pie. If you have a chess pie recipe or buttermilk pie recipe that you want to send me to try, Email me, hello@chrystalevanshurst.com, please. But I don't need to wait until Thanksgiving to do that again. And every year I look at my Thanksgiving menu and the things that I want to work at, get better at, not be stressed about. I'm like, I need to make them throughout the year. And then I get to November the 1st and I'm like, dang it, I still haven't made— I haven't practiced that chess pie again. I make cabbage, y'all, with corned beef once a year. It's a special dish for me. We make pepper pot, one of my mother's dishes, once a year. And every year I think, girl, practice that. And here we are and it's November. This is your reminder that the holiday is coming. Make your plans, do your shopping, get the potluck list going, practice the meal in advance. This is also your reminder that 2024 is coming. So make your list, look at it in advance, practice, have the conversations, get away, tell your husband, let's talk about next year, talk to your family, talk to your friends, finish the book. This is the time so that when the clock strikes midnight on 2024, you already know where you're going. You know what this means? Because when you get in the car, you are either the person that drives out of your driveway, drives out of your neighborhood, and then as you're getting on the freeway, you pick up your phone and you put the address in your hand and then you map it out, or you wait until you get to the part of the journey where now you don't know what the exit is and you're like, oh, let me figure out exactly where I'm supposed to turn. You're either that person who figures it out on the way and you risk your life to do it on your phone, or you're the person who sits in the driveway before you ever put your car in reverse. You map out where you're going, or better yet, before you ever got in your car, you map out where you're going because you wanted to know exactly how long it was going to take you and whether or not you needed to leave early and whether or not you needed to leave in advance. I just want you get where you're trying to go in one piece, on time, and feeling good about the travel along the way. That's all I want you to do. And if you do it in the car, or do it at the table, or even do it at a red light before you actually make that left to get onto the feeder road, I'm okay with any of those. I don't want you to realize when the freeway is splitting and then you realize, I'm not exactly sure which way to go, and now in the middle of pressure, in the middle of traffic, in the middle of going 60 miles an hour, now you're trying to plan. That is not how you should work in your life. Now, I think that there's a lot of things you don't have to plan. There's a lot of things you discuss with Jesus along the way. If you're in the car with someone who knows where you're going, I can wait until the freeway splits and then say, girl, which way am I supposed to go? And she can say, oh, stay to your left. That's okay. There are certain things in life you can do like that. You can talk to Jesus about as you go, talk to your husband about as you go. I'm not trying to make you a Type A person. I don't want to make you rigid. What I'm saying is that some of us are out here risking our lives getting directions. Some of us are out here risking Thanksgiving dinner waiting till the last minute, and some of us are out here starting the year stressed when you don't have to. So get a planner, get anybody's planner. This is my Black Book, y'all. I done torn it up. This is me with my brain on steroids. This is me trying to manage my life. This is me. I tore the book. I had to put, put packing tape on it, and then I put some washi tape on it because this is a pocket and I busted it open on the other side, so I had to tape it. Listen, I walk with this everywhere. I walk with my planner. I plan out my life and then I write down what's happening in here. And then what I do— this is— I have two of them. This is this year, this is last year. Then what I do, and I'm about to do this for this year, then what I do is I go back through the year, all the things that I learned in the sermons, all the things that I said I was going to do, all the notes that I did not want to forget. And you want to know what I do? I go back with a highlighter. I'm gonna find a good page. I go back with a highlighter and I highlight the things that still matter. Because I don't want to forget in my planning for the next year that this still matters. If it doesn't matter, I let it go. But if it still matters, I highlight it and I say, uh, I still want to go to that store that had the homemade body butters and look at those for Christmas gifts. I'm glad I wrote that down in July because at Christmas last year, guess what I did? I remembered what I'd already said Okay, I need to learn how to work the generator because in 2021 the whole world froze over and my husband was working the generator and I thought if it ever freezes over and he's not here, I want to learn how to work it. So, you know, we're going to do during the holidays, I'm going to have my husband teach me how to work the generator or watch a YouTube video. I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget what my heart told me, what my soul told me. I don't want to forget what the Lord told me. When I look at my notes notes from my— from the sermons. And I'm looking at it. I don't want to forget what my— what my coach told me. I don't want to forget. And I'm looking at it and I'm going, what did I already receive? What did I already learn? That if I move too quickly, I already got gold and I'm leaving it on the table. You know, you hear about people— I'll close with this. This is getting good to me. This is getting good to me. Have you ever seen or heard— maybe you've watched it on a DIY channel— where people are stripping down a house, right? They are renovating a house and they take the house down to the bones. And when they are doing the demolition work, sometimes they find things behind the walls. They find money behind the walls. People have found jewelry behind the walls. People have found journals behind the walls. And you want to know what happened? Somebody forgot. They left their treasure. Sometimes that happens because they died quickly. Sometimes they moved and maybe the wife didn't tell the husband, and then the, the wife dies, and so the husband sells the house. He never knew she put the jewelry in the walls. Or maybe you put it in there and out of sight, out of mind, but somebody else will have the treasure. And then you'll be looking at it thinking, oh my gosh, when you sell the house, you can't go back and get the stuff out of the walls. It's sad what people have left in places because they were moving too fast to remember the gold from a season gone by. There is gold in the season gone by. You have learned some lessons, my friend. Some of those have been hard won. Some of those have been tough. But here's what I need you to know. You're still here. You get to still mine the treasures of 2023. And if you don't think you have treasures, You're lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself. You have treasures. You just have to look. So you can look for the recipe. You can look for your list. You can look for your plans. How many people did I cook for last year? Look at your list.

Why?

Because there's gold for you to mine. There's something that you've learned in a sermon, there's something that you wrote in a journal, there's something that you said you would do. Clean up, get rid of the paper. There's something you've been looking for that's in that pile in the corner of your room. It's time for you to look at your life so that you can plan and prepare for the life to come. So this is me telling you This is your season.

In all seriousness, y'all, my wife works really hard to put these videos together for you. So if you enjoyed this video, be sure and comment below. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I'm proud of my wife.

She does a great job.

She does a great job. And I've enjoyed being in front of the camera with y'all today and not watching college football. I really enjoy this. Thank you, all you people that subscribe. Yeah, hit the button below and subscribe. Take away from my day. My name is Mr. Hurst. Is that it? Doesn't my wife look beautiful today? Although I'm looking real crazy right now because she woke me up and I was asleep. Oh, I'm sorry. I was watching football. My wife thinks I'm a handsome man with a great beard. I got a fresh cut. Yeah, fresh cut, I guess. Yeah, I got it this morning. The game's over now. She's going to let me go back and watch Saturday football. Yeah, I have to watch another game because that one is over. Thank you.

Mr. Hurst, y'all.