Daily Archives: November 29, 2011

Our Advent Activity Box

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Growing up, I always loved Advent Calendars. Opening up all the little pages to find a treat and count down to Christmas Day! It really doesn’t get much better than that.

Now as an adult, I want to continue the tradition of advent calendars with my kids, but being the quasi-crafty sometimes over achiever that I am, I decided I could do better than the two dollar boxes at the grocery store. Pinterest didn’t help.

I’ve been seeing beautiful Advent calendar ideas for months now and kept humming and hawing about which fun project to try. Like:

And many, many more. So many great ideas to choose from – some costing more money and time than others, but all of them fabulous and enviable, but in the end I decided to be my own drummer and make my own version entirely, mashing up various ideas from around the blogosphere and putting my own spin on it.

Here is our Advent Activity Box!

I literally just gift wrapped an old Amazon box with fun Christmas wrapping paper (and I didn’t do a great job either – fancy wrapping skills? Not required for this project. Just get it covered).

Then I took a leftover scrap of gift wrap and on the back wrote “Days Until Christmas” then taped it to the box. I folded it up so that it was fairly straight edged and somewhat nice looking. I’m not a complete slacker.

Inside the box I have 24 envelopes numbered 24 through 1, so one envelope for each day until Christmas. On December 1st we’ll open the Envelope that reads 24 and so on…

Inside each envelope is a fun activity to do that day to celebrate the holidays. Everything from make ornaments to drive through town and look at the lights, sing Christmas carols and celebrate mommy’s birthday on the 24th. I spent a lot of time going through the calendar to make the activities realistic and put each of said activities on my google calendar to give me a little notice for things that need more planning.

I decided to be dorky and festive and draw little illustrations on the cards, too. Some are better than others. I won’t embarrass myself by showing you my pictures of donuts or birthday cakes. But I’m pretty sure the kids will get a kick out of this craft that didn’t cost me a dime. MM is very into the concept now of “how many days until….” and he’s super into all things Christmas so this is just combining those two things into one month-long extravaganza of planned Holiday goodness.

I’ll let you know in a few weeks if I was way in over my head with this idea!

Trimming the Tree.

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On Black Friday when most of the US was recovering from crazy shopping expeditions (hope nobody got too trampled this year), we were trimming our Christmas Tree – a new tree in the new house! We picked up this inexpensive 6 1/2 ft tree from Walmart a few weeks ago for just $40 in an online special. Talk about a bargain!

The tree was ridiculously easy to set up compared to others I’ve assembled over the years. And I’m thrilled to have a full sized tree after several years of using a little 3 foot tree set up on our Coffee Table. We’ve come a long way.

Dan was a little disappointed at first, having grown up with live trees (maybe next year) but after I fluffed it up and we got it decorated, he agreed it looked pretty nice, especially for the price. Plus, I promised him we’d do the live tree thing soon – so he’s really just biding his time and making the most of things this year.

The kids were both very into the whole decorating process, eager to help and hang ornaments. Especially MM who SO gets the whole thing this year. He is going to love this Christmas season.

Included in the price of our tree was a package of shatterproof red ornaments. I won’t think about what they were made from or how eco-friendly they are – I’m just embracing the non-breakable miracle right now. I shouldn’t have to panic too much about this tree with the kids. It’s light weight and decorated with mostly non-breakable ornaments (the nicer stuff is on the top).

And the gorgeous red ornaments are so simply and chic in their design and glitter and sparkle from across the room so beautifully. I love just sitting in the living room and gazing at the tree all lit up and stunning.

Clearly I don’t get out much.

But that’s okay – the view from inside is pretty great.

A Bokeh Wonderland in fact. I won’t bombard you with ALL the bokeh pictures I’ve been taking this year, now that I’ve figured out HOW I’ve been having a field day. Just think, I’ve got all season to perfect my Bokeh skills….

All we need now is something to top the tree. Coming soon…

love.bug.I submitted my Christmas Tree pics to Love-Bug’s Photo Show Off – you should check out her photography, it is ah-mazing. Got some pretty Christmasy pics you want to share? You should submit yours, too, here! You have until December 5th to enter.