i made this little chalkboard ages ago in a MOPS meeting. i was the craft coordinator and NO ONE pointed at my mistake! and of course i painted it with a paint pen and i just have never bothered in 7 years to repaint the little part. call me lazy.
i finally decided to make a new advent countdown by stitching up little bags to hold goodies and activity ideas. i was going to quickly whip them up, add a pretty red number and use my endless stash of ribbon for cinching. guess what my mistake was? i thought it would be quick. not quite. i love them, but they were a tiresome little project. i used a green gingham for all the bags. i may or may not have chosen the green because i knew i would have to cut up my curtains to have enough material just so i would have an excuse to buy more fabric for the curtains.
but i did get the little guys finished, sort of. some are missing ribbons, and all the little strings left over from sewing need to be cut. my kids don't care though about perfection because they're cool like that. oh, your's aren't? i'm sorry.
the hardest part was coming up with idea to put in there. i didn't want dinky toys or candy in all of them. my kids are out of school for the all but a few days of december so we had the luxury of different activities to include in them christmas-y or not. here's some of what i came up with:
ornaments for their little trees. that was the first day.
candy which i took out of the stocking stash for christmas because i hadn't come up with an activity. call me lazy again.
look at christmas lights
go caroling with church
read luke 2 from the bible
make christmas fudge
watch a christmas movie
make christmas cookies
go to the museums downtown
buy and donate food to the food bank
see the christmas play at church
sleep under the christmas tree
make christmas ornaments
luckily we missed some days so i didn't have to come up with 24 ideas. plus i put the different christmas movies in different bags, so that took care of 5 bags! elf, polar express, charlie brown's christmas, christmas carol, emmet otter's jugband christmas.
oh? you don't know that last one? i didn't either! i had never heard of it until i got married and learned this is my husbands favorite christmas movie. so stinking cute! barbecue is the best song ever. they stream it through netflix. woo-hoo! my kids haven't seen it in several years so i was so happy to see netflix has it now.
merry "chritmas"!
