I am so happy I finally made an advent calendar for the kids. This was a project that had a lot of parameters—I had to use what I could find in my craft room (I bought a few things), and wanted it to be fun, inexpensive, not involve sugar (and it involved sugar), and not involve small toys. I love small toys, but I feel like our house is full of small toys. Over the years, we have accumulated so many stocking stuffer type small toys, we have drawers of them. I kind of have nightmares about all the small toys we have, so I knew I didn't want to add to that.
What I ended up using was small envelopes (used for gift enclosures/business cards. I have a ton of these I use for thank yous and for items I sell) and then I had Pete get some cool stickers downtown at Powells— they have a great selection. I cut them up and stuffed them in the envelopes. I also added gold chocolate coins then used my 1" hole punch to punch out numbers and my big splurge was the $7.50 I spent on the digital collage sheets, which I printed and then glued on the envelopes. I love using these sheets and the price is totally worth it to me to have repeated use of these images for all sorts of craft projects. I added some twine and 24 small clothespins (which were hard to find around the house, but I managed)
Okay, then. The girls will have to take turns opening these every 3 days. It will work out. I hope to make a different one next year, it was really fun and felt right. It felt like a good project, not like a "I have to make this and it stopped being fun 20 minutes ago" project.
in other happy news:
I was excited to buy these new cards from Eireann and received them last week, they are even better in person. (Don't look, Grammie) I am a huge fan of Eireann's watercolors and have been using her cards and looking at her calendar every month all year. She has a new one this year, too. And in this lovely post she provides a discount code good for a few more days.
