Advent Calendar

So we made our Advent calendar.  I took felt and made a Christmas tree and the little pockets so that the kids can pull out a piece of paper that tells what we will be doing that day. (Decorating the Christmas tree, making Christmas decorations, reading the Christmas story, etc.)  At first I started hand stitching the pockets and got 4 done in about 3 hours.  My friend was kind enough to let me borrow her sewing machine so I was able to get the other 21 pockets done in an hour.  I was just shocked at how fast it went!  Plus it was very exact and precise and when I was hand stitching I was not exact or precise.  It's amazing how fast things go when you use a machine.  Once I got home, the boys and I, had fun decorating the Christmas tree and the pockets. If you are looking for a fun project to do with kids this is something you can do.  You could actually have your older kids help you sew the pockets to put in candy or whatever you want to do.  My kids are 10 months, 3 and 5 years old so I just did the sewing and gave them free reign over decorating the tree and the pockets.

 This pocket I had stitched and I'm pretty confident it took me 25 minutes and I was able to do a probably 15 pockets in 25 minutes with the sewing machine.  They are not perfect but they work.

 My boys are so proud of their advent calendar.  John tells me that the white at the base of the Christmas tree reminds him of a rabbits tale.  Sigh....not much I can do when I let the kids have full reign on how to decorate the advent calendar. 

I just took a large sheet of red felt for the background, then I cut out the Christmas tree and cut out 25 pockets.  Hot glued the tree and all the decorations and pockets.  The tree I would have let the kids completely decorate but I have the HOT glue gun which gave me a blister a couple times and I just didn't want my kids to have a burnt finger. But if you had the low temperature glue gun you could have the kids completely decorate the tree.  With the numbers I did all the numbers with glitter glue.  The kids got a little to close and touched the glue before it dried so it's not perfect and then they wanted more glitter so poured gold dust on the glue with got on the felt so it looks a little dirty but I'm pleased with the results and I'm ready to start December with all sorts of fun activities for the kids - between our Advent Calendar Activities, our Advent scripture verses and our mischievous stuffed animal we should have fun this December.

I finished the evening eating a snowman that I bought at my favorite bakery.  It was a cute little snowman and it had a strawberry filling that was SO awesome! Bring on winter and Christmas.  This snowman will be the closest we get to having snow over in Taiwan.