the sweet truth

Daisy likes to help me bake.  I tell myself it's because she likes to be with me,

or that she just wants to help out,

or that she really loves the bonding time with me.

but who am I kidding, really?

advent calendar

I wish I could be one of those moms who blogs every couple days.  Shoot.  Once a week or even once a month would be an improvement.  But I'm not.  I just have my hand in too many pots to make it a priority and quite frankly, I think I'm okay with that.  So a lot has happened since August!  Our new little guy is now 4 months old, smiling constantly (okay, I know he's not smiling in the picture but I promise he smiles all the time!) and so very close to rolling over!

I love Christmas.  I have always loved Christmas, but now that I have kids, I love it even more.  Their excitement is so incredibly contagious.  This year I made an advent calendar for the 24 days leading up to Christmas.  Jesse is still a little too young to know what the excitement is all about with it, but Daisy likes to ask every day, "What is on our number today, Mommy?"

The calendar I had originally planned on doing was this one.  I loved it because it was different and I recently bought a big ol' pack of paper lunch bags so that I could use ONE for a school project for Daisy and was thinking, 'what am I going to do with all these bags?' because it's not something we use regularly.  However, when I went to actually make it, I realized I didn't really have a good spot to hang it.

So...I went back to the drawing board, aka Pinterest board, found a few different ones I liked and pulled ideas from all of them.  This is what it ended up looking like:

I really liked this because between my crafty stash and Daisy's school supplies I was still able to just use things that I already had on hand.  I found this white poster board in the garage and wiped it off.  For the tree I used another poster board to draw the tree outline so it was nice and straight.  Then I used green and brown construction paper for the tree.  

I used a little tupperware container to trace the circles onto scrapbook paper and used number stickers for the days.  I painted the tops of the clothespins and hot glued them to the poster board. 

Here is our list of activities.  Rather than think up something big and crazy every day, The Hubs and I sat down and talked about the things we wanted to do this month, things that we were planning on doing anyway.  Then I incorporated those things into our calendar and we thought up ways to make them special.

1. Decorate the tree

2. Make paper snowflakes and hang them up.  (We still haven't gotten to this one.  Oopsie!)

3. Christmas shopping with Mommy

4. Make Christmas cards for grandparents

5. Set up nativity (I've been saying forever that I wanted to get the kids a play nativity.  My hubby came home with THIS yesterday and surprised me!  I kinda felt like it was a present for me!)

6. Make a Christmas wreath

7. Make ornaments

8. Do something nice for someone else

9. Go to a Christmas movie (we are seeing Arthur Christmas. Screenland at Crown Center has holiday movies for 5 bucks and it includes popcorn and a juicebox!  Not sure who's more excited...)

10. Christmas shopping with Daddy

11. Baking Day

12. Christmas Crafts

13. Wrap presents

14. Drive to see Christmas lights in our PJs!

15. Color a Christmas picture

16. Family film a movie night (we've been talking about this for a while.  we are breaking out the ol' video camera and just going to town. :)

17. Snowman pancakes and hot chocolate for dinner

18. Make and decorate sugar cookies

19. Christmas caroling to grandparents via skype

20. Read the Christmas story

21. Pop popcorn and watch a Christmas movie

22.Visit Santa (checking out the Bass Pro Shop Santa this year!)

23. Bake a birthday cake for Jesus

24. Christmas scavenger hunt

25. Merry Christmas!  Be together, celebrate, and EAT!

We are also having the kids open a Christmas book every night.  Unfortunately I don't remember which blog I saw it on.  It's an idea that's all over the internet though, so I'm sure you could find it in a couple clicks.  I think the idea is to add to their Christmas book collection each year, however that's not in our budget this time so I am using the few that they already have along with a ton I am able to get from our library.  Works for us!

Since I am sure another blog post will be long in coming, may you have an awesome Christmas holiday with your family and friends celebrating Christ's birth!