Our Advent Calendar

I'm trying to remember when we first came across the idea of an activity/craft advent calendar but it was a few years ago and has now become part of our family Christmas tradition.

It felt strange last year not doing one but I was recovering from surgery. So not a good time to plan lots of stuff, as I couldn't guarantee being fit enough to do them, which would of been disappointing to all.

 I always get the children to help choose the activities, we have to read The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve, that's another family tradition we have. These won't be the only crafts that we will be up to over the run up to Christmas, L has already spotted a Christmas cake that she liked the look of and wants me to make. The children love to open a door, unroll a scroll etc depending on what advent calendar we have made and see what we might be doing that day.

This year M and I made an advent calender using the idea of gift tags, I had seen something similar but using bags, with a gift in each bag so we adapted it. Cutting small gift tags out of card, we put together some words that we felt are important to us at this time of year, these are Happy Christmas, peace, hope and joy.

I found the star pattern in this lovely book, Doodle Stitching Holiday Motif Collection, there are lots of lovely things I would like to make, gingerbread houses, the nativity scene figures to start with.

Once we had cut and glued all the bit together

I wrote the craft/activity on the back.

This years advent list.

Also hoping to spend some time with M looking at how Christmas is celebrated around the world and for L I have a book with a story a day for advent Advent Storybook, 24 Stories Before Christmas

Linked in with Frontier Dreams