Christmas Countdown!

First, I would like to point out that the funny pic of Carson at the bottom of the last post has an subtle yet humorous detail. He puts his flip-flops on himself and rarely gets the little toe-strap in the right place. Look closely. 🙂

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As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve been looking for ways to really relish the Christmas season without getting caught up in consumerism and big presents. A friend gave me a book as a baby shower gift about establishing traditions with your family. There was one idea that I loved and we decided to implement this year–hopefully to repeat again next year! Each day counting down to Christmas, we have a slip of paper that tells us something we will do together as a family that day. This took some planning!

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I googled around a couple months ago and came up with a pretty good list. I was able to find a bunch of people who do this, and they shared their ideas. Also, I’m always looking for someway to be crafty this time of year, so I wanted to MAKE an advent calendar/countdown. I found a way to make it myself and it was really affordable. I found a die cut (how do you spell that? Die? Dye?) at my craft store for these little paper boxbags. I was able to get 4 out of one piece of scrapbook paper. So, I only needed 7 pieces of paper–and some of them were double sided. Then I bought 5 spools of ribbon at 75 cents/per. I already had 2 cheapo fake pine garlands from Michael’s. Oh, and one sheet of stickers for $1.99. VOILA!