My Advent Calendars....

As promised here are my Advent calendars I recently made.

This cone one was taken from The Red Thread- you can find hers here. I filled each cone with one yellow star (they're rather small so you can't see them in the photos). Each star has a fun, fast activity written on them. For example: Do Five Jumping Jacks, Sing a Song, Hug Mommy, Hug Daddy, etc.

Here's my string of envelopes. I got the idea for it here. I used my Cricut machine (with the Base Camp cartridge) to cut envelopes. The frustrating thing was that I could only cut four envelopes per 12" square paper. On the other hand, it was really nice not having to cut out all those envelopes by hand. I strung them up between my skis on a string of jute. I bought the tiny clothespins from Hobby Lobby.

Now, in these envelopes I tried to put more meaningful family activities. Some of the activities we've already done include: coloring Christmas coloring sheets, painting toenails (okay, so Mark didn't get his painted but he did paint Ava's), we all wrote letters to Santa and last night we played a few rounds of Uno. Tonight we're going to a Christmas concert (which Mark will be singing in). Tomorrow we're supposed to get a Christmas tree- at least according to the envelope.

The girls each have their own Advent calendar in their rooms (these ones were purchased). I filled their calendars with puzzle pieces. They both have a puzzle and on Christmas Day we'll be able to put the puzzles together. I did add a few pieces if chocolate- but not for every day.