(c) 2008 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com
Ok, in non-grumpy news, here is our Advent calendar, which I made and am proud of and have been meaning to post for, oh, say about 12 days. Got the idea from Kids Craft Weekly, just so you know.
I bought a book of 12x12 inch fancy Christmas paper and chose 24 different sheets. I folded each one into a cup, then sorted them into the order I thought looked nice, wrote on the numbers, and hot-glued a ribbon on each one, alternating red and green. Bonus - the color at the top says who gets to pick their candy first - red is Pumpkin, green is Penguin. So, if you've got 3 kids, you could just pick 3 colors.
Then I covered a cardboard tube with wrapping paper, figured out a way to suspend it from our picture rail, and hung them from it and filled 'em. Voila!
I like how big they turned out - big enough for a few pieces of candy or a couple of candy canes and a piece of paper with our Xmas activity for the day written on it with ease. You could put very small toys in it, too. I like that Pumpkin no longer asks me ALL THE TIME if it's Christmas yet because it makes a lovely visual to show how many we've done & how many are left. Since we're traveling for Christmas, I can even take the last few days off and bring 'em along, if I so desire.
I don't like how the tube with wrapping paper looks like a tube with wrapping paper. Maybe a thick wooden dowel or pole painted would look classier. ... But that's NOT a this year project!
Also, hanging it higher than the kids can reach works well. :)P.S. Hippogriff.
6 comments:
LOVE the advent calendar. You're so crafty! And it fits larger stuff than my brand new one.
You know, I need to find a way to do something like that. Maybe not Advent, but something similar, because it looks really cool.
HV - just call it a Christmas Countdown and do seasonal colors/patterns for the cups. Or do a birthday countdown for the month (or so or whatever) before her birthday in her favorite colors. I'm doing the counting based on the date, but you could always do a countdown to a vacation, a birthday, whatever, especially if you just do fun colors.
And Ms. Huis, what do you put in your crafty envelope/cups?
Well, this is our first year doing it, but it's working well so far. In each one we have 4 small pieces of candy (one for each of us, like Kisses, Tootsie Rolls, etc.) and a piece of paper with the Xmas activity of the day on it.
The holiday activities are things we'd be doing anyway like make a gingerbread house, make cookies - [somebody's] choice, listen to Xmas music (doing that on a travel day), read a Xmas book, surprise present! (it was matching Santa aprons & Xmas books), go shopping with Daddy for Mommy's present, write cards, do a Xmas craft, read the Xmas story in the Bible, visit Santa, drive around & look at lights, etc. I wrote slips with all the ideas I had or events like visit Santa, then put longer/complicated things on weekend days & simpler ones during the week.
They also got this sheet of punch-out ornaments with Christmas devotions on them at Sunday School, so I stuck those in as well for each day.
That's an awesome advent calendar! I have a wooden cabinet with 25 little doors for Pumpkinpie, and am thinking I have to go out after Christmas this year and try to find one for th Bun when they go one sale, if I can locate one. I do like one you can put your own things in rather than the pre-made ones.
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