Our Advent Calendar

A month or so back, I was looking for ideas on making our own Advent Calendar. My mom made one many, many years back that was hung with little presents, one for every day in December leading up to Christmas. It was the most excellent advent calendar we ever had. Not that the chocolate ones aren't bad, but this one was different, therefore more fun.

Also, I've been wrestling with the idea of how to not let the kids decorate my Christmas tree because I'm somewhat anal about how it's decorated....

Anyway, as I was perusing the different sites, I came across a post about a recycle bin advent calendar. I liked the idea a lot - it looked cool, and I already had all the supplies (except that I had just recycled my Pottery Barn Christmas catalog). The lady whose idea this was, instead of stuffing the pockets with candy, stuffed them with little ornaments and gave her kids a Christmas-tree-shaped-rosemary-bush to decorate. And all her ornaments were made from recycled stuff. Sounds cool, so I thought I'd copy. Not sure about using recycled stuff to make ornaments, but I have plenty of craft supplies so I'll be making some ornaments that the kids can hang on some manzanita branches I've ordered. It'll be our "holiday tree" and I'll reuse the branches to hang easter eggs at Easter, and maybe ghosts and bats at Halloween. I won't be stuffing all the pockets with ornaments - not that creative and I don't have that much time, plus, what's an advent calendar without chocolate? Can't take all the fun away.

So, Marlena and I worked on this calendar this morning. I had already precut all the pockets, and all that remained to do was find pictures to glue them to the pockets, arrange the pockets, glue them on, and then find the numbers 1 thru 24.

We're both really happy with how it turned out. Wolf thinks it pretty cool, too. So, I decided to show if off, 'cause this is my life now. Doing crafts... in addition to cooking, cleaning and wiping dirty bottoms and teary eyes.

The whole thing...
























And a close up of the pockets....



















By the way, I reordered the Pottery Barn christmas catalog and also used the Crate and Barrel christmas catalog. The holder and pockets are made from Trader Joe's paper bags, and the numbers are from the flyers you get in the mail.

And realistically, I think the kids are still going to want to help decorate the tree....

New Picture of the Kids...

Here is the latest picture of all three kids together, smiling and looking at the camera! Got it with the first shot! Can you tell they're having fun?

Marlena's Gap Tooth Smile

A recent picture of Marlena and her new smile. She lost her tooth after eating a dinner of tacos. It actually became completely turned around and was poking her and bleeding. She finally calmed down enough and I just plucked it out of her mouth. The tooth fairy was pretty generous and gave her a toonie and a loonie.

Happy Easter

We enjoyed what's become our Easter tradition again this year. Meeting our friends at a petting zoo in a nearby town, followed by a picnic and easter egg hunt. This year we planned ahead and looked for a park to have the picnic at rather than driving aimlessly around hoping to stumble across something.

It was enjoyable, if a little cold, despite being April, and somewhat sprinkly.

Here are some of the best pictures, not particularly "Easterly", but recent, of the kids from the day.