Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Advent Box

As if Christmas wasn't busy enough, I decided that an extra good thing to do in the lead-up would be to whip up a homemade Advent Calendar, so that the boys would have a special Christmas activity to do each day.

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I found lots of good ideas on the web, for activities and for construction.  (Home-schooling sites are a mine of information.)  In the end I put in a mix of very easy, achievable activities for the days when we were also fitting in school/sport/tap-teaching - like reading a Christmas book at bedtime, or doing a Christmas maze printed from the net - and fussier activities like card making or tree decorating were carefully plotted to fall on days with not much on.

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As for layout, I used Aunty Cookie's Christmas Wrap (left over from last year) to make origami envelopes and then stuck on some faux dymo labels. 

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By the time I'd finished all the folding and stuffing and sticking last night it was nearly 1am, so all the envelopes were stylishly dropped in a box for discovery in the morning.

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Cherub was probably more excited about the chocolate advent calendar, which is for bedtime.  He also, for good measure, asserted that mine wasn't really a calendar (fussy fussy, it's a calendar in a box, okay?). And not content with that, little fidget-gidget that he is, he managed to push down the Number 1 envelope that I'd left sticking up, which meant that as Climber opened the first envelope and read aloud the day's activity I practically had a heart attack.  You don't hang your stocking and leave a present for Santa on December the 1st, not in this house anyway.  No, no, no put that one back and start again with number 1 please!


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12 comments:

  1. fantastic! Maybe next year I'll have more inspiration...

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  2. Super cute! Love the font too.

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  3. I'm just surprised you can get your children to save the chocolate calendar for bedtime. We had a job on to stop all 24 windows being opened this morning.

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  4. With the whole chocolate calendar thing...is it true that you are only allowed to open one a day?

    Ummm...oops!

    Great idea for the box! I hope you all have fun with it, can you let me know which day is the "take the family out for gelato" day? Am I family? Can I be? Just for that day?

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  5. I loved doing this sort of thing with my 2 when they were littler. Happy memories.

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  6. I love Cherub's just out of bed hair.

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  7. I've just read Fairlie's version of this. Snap indeed.

    And now you've made me all wistful for the time when I had little ones... Sniff.

    Have a happy time!

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  8. this is just absolutely wonderful - totally inspiring and will be imitating this next year.

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  9. Okay. I am so doing that next year.

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  10. what a great idea - too clever :0 we made bon bons today minus the snaps with lollies left from the last bday party :) best le

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  11. I absolutely LOVE this idea and will definitely be doing it next year - genius, and sooooo cute!!

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Don't let the cat get your tongue.