After my Snow Globe post, there were lots of questions about my advent calendar, so here some more details about what I do with my family. Having an advent calendar has been one of my most favorite traditions since I was a little girl, so I am always excited to do things with my kids. This year I wanted to find a new calendar, and I bookmarked 547 of them (okay not really, but lots) from the web and pinterest, etc. I had very good intentions of being crafty and making something and in the end I splurged on one I loved from Pottery Barn Kids.
Unfortunately it says it’s no longer available, but I’m thinking for those of you who are the sewing-crafting kind of chicks, this would be fairly easy to knock off. It would definitely take quite a bit of work, but I think it would be doable, or at least something similar. If you’re interested in doing that, here’s some details:
First of all, it’s huge. It measures 5 feet tall by 3 feet wide. The entire back is red corduroy, and the front has a 2 inch corduroy border and then a burlap type center. It has batting inside so it feels like a big quilt.
All of the stockings are different, with felt, fabric, and embroidered stitching. They measure about 6 inches tall with the top opening being about 4 inches wide.They’re strung with white yarn that is loose so you can move it around.
Santa is at the bottom, with bells on his coat
And a reindeer holds Christmas Day
And there are little felt tree, branch, and berry details throughout.
If anyone attempts to make one, I want to see a picture!
Now, for filling it up. I do a mix of things inside. I like to have some activities, some service oriented things we do for others, and some that are simply for fun. Some involve opening a little gift, others are little riddles written on paper, and others are items that represent an activity.
Because the type of activity in each day really depends on my family schedule, I just keep my big master list and fill the actual stockings a few days at a time.
One trick is to make a list of the things you’ll be doing anyway during the month, and use those too. Things like a concert at school, or a church Christmas party, or pictures with Santa, etc.
Here are the things on my list, and I want to make sure everyone knows that I am realistic enough to know that we will not do all of these things, or even these types of things every day! December (and life in general) is busy, so I have little bags of treats and trinkets to slip in when I just need a little prize in there. The trick is having things organized so you have options.
Here’s my list:
Family Activities:
*Go to a Christmas movie in the theater (movie tix in stocking)
*Attend our church Christmas breakfast
*Drive to DQ for peppermint Blizzards (picture of a blizzard in the stocking)
*Have a movie night at home with red and green candy popcorn (photo of movie cover in stocking, tied on to a little bag of popcorn)
*Attend city tree lighting, our tour lights in our area (a baggie of lights in stocking)
*Read the Christmas story from the Bible and act it out (a tiny figurine of baby Jesus in the manger in stocking)
*Go sledding
*Go ice skating
Service for others:
*make gift baskets for the missionaries at our church
*visit the local nursing home and deliver flowers
*take goodies to friends and family
*prepare gifts for teachers, bus drivers, mail carriers, garbage men, etc
*Write Christmas letters to Grandparents
*Send Christmas cards to servicemen
*go shopping and pick out a toy to donate to charity
Gifts:
*These are slips of paper that tell them to open a numbered wrapped gift from a basket
*Read a new book (The Jolly Postman (my FAVE) wrapped up to open before bed, plus a few more we’re adding to our collection))
*Start a Lego count down (actual day #1 since we did snow globes early. More about this below) Lego advent wrapped under tree.
*Watch “The Snowman” movie (movie wrapped up under tree)
Kitchen/Craft Stuff:
*Make hot chocolate with all the fixings (hot chocolate fixings in stocking)
*Make snowflakes and eat them! (a little snowflake snack)
*Get trapped in a snow globe!
*Decorate gingerbread houses
*Make Christmas ornaments
*Open a new Christmas cereal (wrapped under the tree)
Lastly, if you have Lego fans at your house, we LOVE the Lego advent calendars. They make them in several different themes. At our house we’re all about Lego Star Wars. Each day you open a window and there is a tiny little Lego set in there. On the inside of the door is the instructions. Some our little things like ships, and others are Lego guys.
And one other fun tradition we sort of started this year is one I saw on 320 Sycamore last year. If you’ve got lots of Christmas books, wrap them all up and put them in a basket. Let your kids choose one book every night to unwrap and read. Or if you don’t have that many books, you can do it once or twice a week, etc. It’s fun because the books only come out once a year! (Do you all have “You are my Miracle“? My copy was a gift from my Aunt Barbara when I had my first baby, and it has become one of my most favorites. Such a beautiful, tender message about parenting, children, and Christmas. )
Oh, and last year we started the tradition of sprinkling Reindeer Food on Christmas Eve. *LOVE* this one.
Okay, this post turned out much longer than I anticipated! Now it’s your turn! If you have fun ideas, or have made an advent calendar you love, feel free to link up in the comments! I’d also love to hear about any great holiday traditions you think other people might enjoy starting in their homes. I’d love to hear all of your fun ideas, so please share!
Questions & Reviews
My favorite Christmas tradition of ours is…on Christmas morning the kids aren’t allowed to come upstairs until we tell them they can (they’re older now and we’re usually waiting on them!) Then they get to see what’s in their stockings while we are waiting on breakfast to come out of the oven (oven baked french toast that I make the night before) All the presents are divided into groups for each family member, but they aren’t sorted by who they are TO, they are sorted by who they are FROM. The youngest GIVES first. Then we go by age. Even though they are 16 and 12 now, they still have a blast being able to GIVE their gifts, (and of course they have fun trying to make the other wait as many rounds as possible!) We live far away from our families and always ship gifts out way before Christmas, so it doesn’t always feel like they are giving anything, but this helps to keep the giving spirit in Christmas.
Great post!!! We finally got an advent calendar this year and got it from Land of Nod
We have lots of traditions: we live close to a lake and love the ducks, so we wait till it gets good and dark (usually late also) and take our duck friends a gift (duck feed). I always get each child a new ornament with their name and date on it (they’ll have lots when they move to their own home…and hopefully good memories to go along) and always Christmas pjs. Our calendar was printed from a paper toy website that has lots of adorable free paper toys. (I’ll find the web if someone wants it) but I’ll be working on something a little more fancy for next year….but will always do the paper one also, my kids love gluing on the paper ornaments! And we watch a Christmas movie every week in December. FUN FUN FUN! Always a service project too! Merry Christmas all!!!!
I got tired of wrapping 24 books, too (plus we have over 50 Christmas books!) so I printed off small pictures of their covers and put those in our advent calendar pockets (you can usually find the image on Amazon). Now my girls find the book that matches the picture and we read it!
Great idea Regan! I have done the wrapping of Christmas books for many years and finally got tired of wrapping them all! Thanks for the tip
My grandson, Caleb, has that exact Star Wars Lego advent calendar. He is so super excited about it! Maybe I’ll get adventurous and make four of the advent calendars- one for each of my grown children’s family.
Mine is not as fancy…this year I made it out of poster board and bought a couple bags of holiday kisses. Each child has 31 (this year- because we start the day after Thanksgiving) kisses in a row. Now in order to get their kiss at the end of the day, they have to do the good deed assigned. I make a big bowl of deeds, like no crying, no screaming, smile all day, do it the first time, and each night we pick the deed for the next day. The kids love it! Last year I just did it with stickers and if they filled up the whole chart they got a medium sized prize. I don’t really let my kids at candy during the week so I think they really enjoy their little treat each evening. I’m a big nerd and like to make it each year and kids kids help me come up with the deeds, my son loves to come up with deeds that are easy for him, but hard for the girls. Now my girls are getting bigger though and well it’s payback time. Today’s deed was tell people you love them AND (my husband added this) give mom and dad kisses and hugs when ever we ask! Love it!
So cute! I love all those stockings. I just made one with activities for this year (we’ve always done candy before)
http://craftingintherain.blogspot.com/2011/11/branch-advent.html
Some of our activities include
–cut snowflakes
–make peppermint ice cream
–make gingerbread houses (using graham crackers)
–make cards for their teachers
–on the 24th we’ll read the Christmas story from the scriptures
I even put “eat cinnamon rolls” in there one day because one of my daughters put it on her list, and I thought it was a great idea 🙂
Oh thank you for sharing the details, ideas, and close up pictures! I saw the Lego advent calendar at the store the other day and thought it was way too cool. And I am so forwarding this post on to my sister because she was looking for good advent calendar activity ideas. PS the Christmas book idea is a favorite of mine too!
We do a book thing too, but I have to wrap so much other stuff, I hated wrapping the 24 books. Soo…I went to the Dollar Tree and bought 24 reusable bags. They work perfectly. Someone much craftier than me could make them…
We also listen to the Nativity story on a Hallmark Advent ornament.
Oh my goodness, I didn’t know The Jolly Postman books were still being published! They were some of my favorite books as a kid 🙂 Also, what a great advent calendar. I love the mix of activities for the family you have, especially the ones that involve your kids in serving the community!