Thanksgiving day Adalyn took her first solo steps. Time is just flying by. Everly starts school this last week. Last week we also had our first snow flurries. We found a butterfly living in our office. I am betting it’s the offspring of one of the many bugs Everly has captured and brought inside.
I cut off a bunch of my own hair and im flabbergasted that Christmas is just a few short weeks away.
I’ve been working hard at planning and prepping for our new advent tradition… The advent basket.
The concept of the advent basket was gleaned from Pintrest. The idea is an item from the basket is opened each day in the count down to Christmas. Depending on your family values and preferences, your basket can be new trinkets, treats, experiences up-cycled things, recycled things, saved things and more…
Our family is doing a combination of things in our advent basket.
You see, we already have a bunch of stuff that we have each brought to the family, like holiday books from our own childhood, movies, activities and such. I’m even making a few gifty things, for example…
- I’m crocheting a christmas colored checkers set now for the advent basket. Will share the pattern for the crochet checkers set soon!
- I also have a up-cycled sweater purse in the advent basket that is stuffed with craft supplies for that particular day’s activities. I made the purse from a old sweater and the instructions can be found here if you’d like to try it too.
All our existing holiday movies and books are wrapped up, I used Everlys various painting and drawing papers to wrap them up. All that is left is to wrap and decorate are trinkets that symbolize the various experiences that are planned throughout the month. I made up easy printable numbers for Photoshop that you can download and edit here (a .psd file) if you’d like.
Our experiences for the basket include:
- making candy cane mallows
- going on a holiday lights excursion complete with hot chocolate to sip
- painting the house windows to look like snow and frost
- making and decorating holiday cookies
- writing letters to santa to send in the mail (If you mail them to Santa Claus, Indiana before 12/15 they will be answered for free!)
- making handprint ornaments to give as gifts and for our own tree
- having the kids go through their toys and choose which ones to donate to the less fortunate
On the first of December we unveiled the advent basket and Christopher Popinkins together via a surprise breakfast that our “elf on a shelf”, Christopher Popinkins, made for us. It was a crockpot french toast breakfast that cooked all night, Christopher made it *wink*.
The table was decorated for Christmas, the basket was displayed and the girls got a kick out of the whole thing. We are excited to bring this new family tradition to the mix and Everly really seems to be enjoying it.
