Last year when we had our Super Frugal Christmas I made this Advent Calendar as a gift for my family using only what I had in my fabric stash and my somewhat limited sewing/embroidery skills. Now that Advent has rolled around again we are finally able to get to use it!
In our determination to try to keep Christ as the center of our Christmas celebrations we are doing family/spiritual activities for every day instead of candy or small toys. I typed up activities and put the folded slips of paper into each one of the stars. Luckily I had the good sense while making the calendar to color code the stars' numbers by weeks since I randomly strewed them about in the sky above the stable, otherwise it would be much less fun to try to find the correct number each day.
For the second Sunday of Advent we lit our second candle, read from Isaiah 9:6 and listened to Handel's Messiah Chorus. Ravenna was upset that we didn't light all four of the candles so we also talked with her about how Christ brings light to the world and lighting the candles one-by-one helps us to appreciate the increase of light as we get closer to celebrating Christ's birth (also the Return of the Sun!).
What I love about this calendar is how personalized I can make it. For example, during this last week we put up the Christmas lights and wreath one day, the next we set up our nature table and this coming week I have the Christmas parties we are attending as activities on the days that they will occur and on December 5, tomorrow, Ravenna will put out her shoes for Saint Nicholas.
To prepare for Saint Nicholas due to some "misconceptions" about who actually will be bringing her gifts on Christmas Eve/Day (we haven't decided yet) we have been spending some time at this lovely website that teaches all about the life of Saint Nicholas. Sometimes we forget to do the things listed on the scraps of paper and sometimes they just don't work out for various reasons but I love having the ideas of festive and enjoyable things to do every day.
5 comments:
Lovely lovely. I love the details of the embroidery. And great ideas to put inside!! I tire of doing candy/toys too....
Are you on pinterest yet?
I remember chatting about how you were going to make it last year. It looks great!!
Your daughter is cheek pinching adorable!!!
Cool, Carrie. You're such a good example to me!
A book that I loved with my kids to teach about Santa Claus is "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" by Amelia Houghton. It is the sweetest and lovliest book about Santa that I know. BTW we became Grandparents on Wednesday December 7th! He's adorable and we can't wait to see him in person!
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