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!

Craft Corner: Paper Snowflakes

I needed a quick and easy winter craft to do with E today, and I saw these snowflakes on mmmcrafts. E is nowhere near being able to cut anything, so I folded and cut out the snowflakes from the templates, and E and I decorated them with different colors of glitter. Once they are dry, we'll hang them up in the window and celebrate winter!

Wordless Wednesday: Trimming the Tree

E's special ornament this year

Helping Mommy hang the ornaments on the tree

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Letter A is for Advent

I can't seem to find an inexpensive Advent wreath anywhere! I am having a hard time even finding purple candles! So to celebrate the season of Advent this year, E and I are doing a couple of crafts. First, we needed a new fridge letter, since our Triangle T has been up since before Thanksgiving, so we made this cute Advent wreath with letter A's as the candles. I don't have in progress shots for this one, a final product photo will have to work for ya!

I had E color 3 letter A's purple (I helped a little, she wanted to color her hands and face instead), and one letter A pink. Well, sort of, I didn't have a pink washable marker, so she colored red over an A on pink paper. Having washable markers at this point is ESSENTIAL.

E colored a green oval with red and green and brown (her choices!) for our wreath.

While she napped, I cut out all the pieces, and when she woke up, she helped me glue them all down on a piece of black construction paper.

Then, I cut out a "flame" from yellow craft foam and double-stick taped it to the first letter A "candle." I guess, since it's Sunday, I need to get another candle "lit!"

Craft Corner: Advent Calendar

I love Advent calendars! We had one when I was little that was a chimney with Santa coming down it. Inside the chimney were little boxes, one for each day. And inside each box was a fun activity my mother had planned for us all to do together. I am so excited about sharing this tradition with E. My only problem is that I have no Advent calendar! Well, it was a problem. I remedied it last night.

I saw these beautiful Christmas countdown envelopes at Blue Cricket Design, and I thought they would be just perfect for what I want. Something simple, beautiful, and that I already have the supplies for!

Here's my version. Instead of using library envelopes, I just cut the flaps off some regular letter envelopes I had laying around.

Each envelope contains a note with something fun for our family to do together. E was so excited to pull the note out of the envelope this morning and have me read it.

Once we discover what our Advent activity is for the day, I hang the notes on a string in our dining room. It looks a little silly now with just two, but once we get a few more, it will start looking really cool, I promise!

What do you do to help celebrate the Advent season?

Wordless Wednesday

A Letter to Santa
(ok, there are words in this one, but it's still a picture, right?)