The countdown begins

About a month ago, we went on a camping trip with Evan's family. My awesome mother in law decided that it would be fun to make a craft. So, with the help of my also awesome sister in law, they found a tutorial for a really cute advent calendar. Here is mine. It turned out a little LOUDER than I intended, but   that's ok.

 My MIL bought all of the supplies and while the boys went out on the boat, us ladies stayed back to craft:) I did not get the chance to finish mine on the trip, but brought it home to complete. So, here we are a month later, December 1st and I FINALLY finished my advent calendar just in time. It is made from foam board, wrapping paper, scrapbook paper and sticker embellishments. It was fun to make and I enjoyed coming up with the list of things that we would do throughout the month. Here are a few:

• make and decorate homemade Christmas cookies (one of my favs)
• Watch a Christmas movie
• Drink hot chocolate
• Give to a needy family
• make a Christmas craft
• make Smores by the fire pit
• Go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood
• Donate toys
• Review all of our Christmas cards and pray for those families
• Sing Christmas songs
• Tell the story of the candy cane and eat one
• make treats for our neighbors and deliver them
• Read the Christmas story (the real one..Jesus..not Santa)
• Throw a Christmas Neighborhood Block party

Those are just some on our list. Some are simple and fun while others are more meaningful, but they have to be  tasks that we can do as a family with 2 kids under 2. It was very cute to see how excited Dixie got today over "drink hot chocolate." (that was Dec 1st) She can hardly wait for her daddy to get home so that we can share such a fun time...just wait till she realizes that she gets marshmallows on top:) Hope your Christmas season is filled with lots of fun and special things to do too.

On another crafting note, I bought some plain cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby the other day and some Christmas yarn. I had the intention of doing something like this with the letters: JOY

Call me crazy, but I could not get the darn yarn to look right on the letters. I couldn't cover the top and the sides of the J in the same direction and quite frankly, it was driving me insane. So after 20 minutes of attempting this yarn thing (which is probably so simple), I unwrapped my letters and decided to cut up wrapping paper and mod podge them. It gives it an imperfect look as the polka dots don't match up. I put them on my buffet in the living room and it adds a nice punch of color.

Christmas puts me in a crafting mood...are any of you crafting out there?