Christmas season is officially here! Every year it's so difficult for me to wait until after Thanksgiving to begin putting up decorations and start blasting holiday music. When December 1st hits, and I have free license to let my Christmas flag fly. This year we spent a day putting up the tree and the garland, sipping on hot cider and listening to cheery music. I also decided that I wanted to create a new tradition.
My love of Christmas has been present for as long as I can remember. I used to listen to my Nat King Cole Christmas tape until the ribbon wore out. I spent my birthday money one year on a mini Christmas tree to put in my room and decorated it every year. When I discovered advent calendars sometime in elementary school, it was a marvel. Mini presents every day leading up to Christmas? What could be better?! The ones we had as kids were always cheap cardboard boxes made to look like houses, with each "window" containing a Hershey's Kiss. Nowadays advent calendars are far more elaborate... and much more fun! A lot of them include holiday-related activities to participate in, as well as sweet treats.
So I made my own version of an advent calendar so that Grant (who had never even heard of the concept) can enjoy the time leading up to Christmas. I convert him from his Scrooge ways one of these days!
I used materials that I already had in the house (gift boxes, mini craft bags, markers, card stock, printer paper, fabric scraps, embroidery thread, ribbon and even nail polish!), so the whole project cost $0 and was really fun to complete. I think the fact that the supplies were so piecemeal worked to my advantage since I wanted the overall look to be eclectic. It also helped when it came time to make some of the days that called for fabric pockets (like the 5 above and 16 below). I didn't worry about anything looking professional and just matched up equal-sized fabric scraps, creating a hem by hand with embroidery thread. The 16 below is a personal favorite--it looks like a tomato since the pic got cropped, but it's actually a red ornament bulb. And since there weren't enough boxes and bags to get through the whole month (and sewing was far more time consuming than any of the other activities), some of the days are one-of-a-kind, like the "5 Gold Rings" above (there's an activity written on the "rings"), and the ribbon snowman below (whose accessories came care of my friend Jonathan who thought he needed a scarf.
Activity ideas abound on Pinterest, and some days Grant will be only getting candy--we do have television to watch at night, after all--so pulling off this project was pretty easy, and I think it'll make a great new holiday tradition that we can continue through the years! I mean, who wouldn't want to sip on hot cocoa with a candy cane stirrer? Nobody, that's who.
What holiday traditions do you participate in every year?
