Yarn Along

I am excited to participate in my first Yarn Along Wednesday at over at small things.  I LOVE this idea!  One picture: what you're knitting and what you're reading.

I am close to finishing a pair of socks for my husband (aka bigfoot) for Christmas.  They WILL get done!  And I am reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon.  Still reading it.  I've been reading it for months now.  It's just not as exciting for me as Outlander was.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish soon!

Pinecone Ornaments

As part of our Advent calendar, last night we made ornaments for our Christmas tree.  I was inspired by these pinecone ornaments over at The Magic Onions.  I was all out of broken crayons, and thought using beeswax would be nice, but as I thought about it more, I wasn't sure I wanted a 2 1/2 year old playing with hot wax. 

I scored on some pinecones at the thrift store this past weekend and knew we were still doing to do a pinecone ornament.  I know, I know, I live half an hour from the mountains and I could have gone out and picked my own pinecones.  But.  I've been feeling lazy, and these pinecones already had been drilled and wire hooks added!  Sweet!

We decided to make our pinecones a little sparkly.  We painted them with glue and then added glitter.  E loves any craft where Mama gets out the glitter!

This Year's Advent Calendar

You might remember our advent calendar from last year.  We are using the same one again this year, but I have changed it up a little bit.

I decided to hang the whole thing up this year, and I hung it on the wall in our kitchen/dining room.  Last year it was up on the back of my kitchen cabinets and it was too high for E to notice all the time.  Now it's right at eye level.  And to keep track of which day we are on (and to show E how many days we have left until Christmas when she asks for the 47th time today) I hot glued a red pom pom to another clothespin. 

A lot of our activities are the same as last year, but we have some new ones, too!  Yesterday we made our own Christmas tree ornaments - a tradition from my family growing up that I was excited to share with E.  We got bundled up and went to a parade in the dark; all the floats were decorated in lights!  We have a couple of Christmas crafts coming up as well.  I got a beeswax candle kit and one of our crafts will be to make the white Christmas candle for our Advent wreath.

We are doing a Jesse tree this year as well.  I am really liking reading scripture together as a family after dinner each night, and E is excited to hang the ornaments on our little tree.

Happy Advent to all of you!