It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Cue the Christmas music.

I love this time of the year. It’s just so fun and magical. Am I right?

This year I plan on really enjoying this season. I want to get anything that could detract me from having a meaningful Holiday out of the way. Not that sending Christmas cards, giving gifts, or doing service projects is a bad thing, because that is a big part of the Holiday (and it’s fun). But, I don’t want to have that stress carry throughout the rest of the year. Know what I mean? So, I already have my Christmas cards ready to put together. I plan on getting Christmas portraits the week after Thanksgiving. I am starting to think about gifts, which is hard when you’re on a tight budget. I’m trying to get a little more creative with gifts.

I want to plan fun things for us to do in December, so I came across a few ideas I thought I’d share here.

This jumped right out at me when I opened up my Pottery Barn catalog. Realize that I don’t buy anything from that store because it is ridiculously expensive, I just like their ideas for home decor. I think this would be pretty simple to make. Just get some kind of pinboard, a piece of fabric to cover it (maybe linen), some office tags, and some number stickers or rub ons. Then I thought it would be fun to pin up 24 of your most very special ornaments and then everyday until Christmas put up an ornament on your tree(Maybe that is what Pottery Barns’ idea was for this). I love the colors they used for this one, but you could make it a lot more colorful and Christmasy if you wanted.

This is another project I would love to work on. You just paint a bunch of different sized paper boxes and add some numbers on them. Then you stick them up on the wall with tacks or something strong enough to stay on the wall and into each box add fun things to do each day. Here are some ideas for what you can add inside the boxes. Unfortunately to buy all of those boxes it would be a little pricey. I’m hoping Michael’s will have a sale on them soon. For more directions and Holiday ideas visit Ali Edward’s blog here.

Here is a project I am actually working on. It will take a little while, but it is so cute, so that makes it worth it. Actually if you did these little envelopes in an assembly like fashion, it would probably not take so long. Here is a link to the directions.(You’ll have to scroll down a bit) Then you can add a special treat into each envelope. Think chocolate.

I remember seeing this idea last year. Here are directions for this one. I love the idea of using pink buttons, but I have so many red and white buttons that I think it would be wise to use those up. Here are some other ideas for trees to make.

This is another idea from Ali E. She is so creative. There are the tiny spinner things that hold these cards on them (they are called 7 Gypsies ATC Spinners). They are really small, but so cute. I haven’t been able to find one since they keep selling out everywhere. Anyway she just decorated the cards with Twas the Night Before Christmas poem. I thought that was cute. You could do so much with these. You could of course make another kind of advent calendar. You could make sort of a Christmas album using your photos and Christmas supplies. I think I would maybe pick a favorite Christmas song and use the lyrics in the same way as Ali used the poem. I would also add some photos.

As you can see I have a thing for advent calendars. These are all different enough that I would make all of them and not feel weird. I guess I better get working. I have a lot of crafting to do.

I will be back to post photos of Sydney’s playset. Josh got it pretty much all put together and even put down the mulch. Sydney loves her swings and slide. She said she would share with her cousins too.

Also I am trying a new recipe for pulled pork sandwiches that seems easy, so I’ll post it here if it turns out.