Our Advent Calendar

So I made it though NaBloPoMo - only missed ONE day of posting due to a huge brain freeze on my part. I'm so excited that today is December 1!!! And yes, I've been listening to Christmas all day at work today...and in my car for the last two weeks:) I'm going to make my heart overflow with Christmas spirit this year no matter what:)

I put the finishing touches on this lAdvent calendar ast night and hung it up while Miss S was sleeping - she was so excited to see it this morning. She knew I had been working on it but not that it was done:) She opened #1 on our way out of the house this morning - today's activity is "Pick out 5 toys for charity".

A funny story - when I told her I was making an advent calendar she said "I think it's "Event" mom - you are not saying it right". I even wrote it out to her and told her it is a different word than event. No matter what she insists that advent sounds like something you would say in Australia and that it really is "event". Funny little girl! Too many Aussie shows lately on NetFlix.

So - here's a little how-to for this fantastic Advent calendar. Here's what I did:

1. Get 24 coin envelopes

2. Cut off the flap at the top

3. Use a circle punch to cut a half circle in the top

4. Decorate with bits and pieces of Christmas paper, vintage sheet music, old book pages - whatever you like

5. Use a variety of number stickers, thickers, chipboard to number each envelope. Vary the color of the numbers and placement of the numbers to add variety.

6. Type up inserts for the envelopes - I have a template I created - if you want a copy send me an email to raeshadrz at yahoo dot com. I printed mine on green cardstock. I had Miss S help me with coming up with ideas so that we could do some she really wanted to do.

7. Hang em up! I had originally wanted to permanently mount these on a canvas board but then I had an AHA moment - that would be way too big to store year to year, so instead I have them on the inside of our front door - held up with those little tiny powerfully strong magnets. Then each day when we open them I'll place the green card on the front of the envelope with the magnet so that we can see what activities we have already done.



And here's the fun part - I have a gazillion coin envleopes (well really only 500 but that is close to a gazillion) - I'm giving away little packets of 24 of them to THREE lucky readers so that you can make your own Advent calendar for next year - who knows, I might even throw in some other little goodies to get you started on this project. Please leave a comment to be entered in this giveaway and be sure to leave your email address in your comment. I will pick 3 winners on Monday, December 5. Good luck!!