25 Days

With the truly jaded outlook of a mom of 3 kids who have been consistently NOT getting along lately, I constructed our first advent calendar in an attempt to get them in the Christmas spirit by the time Christmas arrives.  We worked together to paint an old canvas I had in my craft area, Lila enjoyed this.  We puzzled over the size of the envelopes, how small would they need to be.  I finally settled on using mini craft bags cut into thirds and hot glued on the bottom only 24 fit at this size, so I chose to add a full size bag along the side, just to be different.  Joey put a stack of old calendar numbers in order so I could see what was missing and I collected miscellaneous holiday papers and old holiday cards from my stash to add some color.

Scraps and Cards and papers

envelopes and bags, what to use what to use?

An evenings work



Next day embellishing has begun!

I have begun adding do dads and whatnots to sparkle it up a bit and give it some fun, I think I will probably keep adding throughout the season, because it is just fun to do!

So, December first arrived!!!  Under number 25, the kids found a scrap of paper that read, "Make paper chains to decorate for Christmas"  So groggy but 'game' they began their morning, 6:30am making paper decorations. 

Day 2 however, began in a very crabby way, crying over the candies I left.  This picky girl who changes her tastes witht the wind. Boo!!  But there is hope, Charlie offered up a trade, and Joey put breakfast together and morning crafts on his list of "Good ways to start the day" (which we had to make because the kids were off to such a tough start this morning) One step forward, one step back and we are going to be in the spirit by the 25th!!!