Christmas Advent Calendar

I LOVE Christmas!  I love the lights, the caroling, the giving of gifts, the parties, the birth of our Savoir, basically everything that comes along with that wonderful holiday called Christmas.  My children also love Christmas, but unfortunately they love receiving presents above all things.  They are little, so I know that this is normal, but I don't want to be normal.  I decided that we needed to start some new family traditions, and I wanted to teach my children to have a heart for others. So, this is what I came up with...

It isn't just your normal count down the days until Christmas, Advent calendar, it is twenty five days worth of traditions and giving.  Each day is a different activity, but I will get to that in a minute. 

I need to first let you know that I did not come up with this idea completely by myself.  I had to look for direction from my dear friend Pinterest.

Here is how we, meaning my children and I, put this little beauty together.

We started out by purchasing a large piece of black foam board and a large frame that fit it.  We found ours at hobby lobby, half price frame day because I'm cheap. We also loaded up on Christmas scrapbook items. Buttons, ribbons, stickers, pretty Christmas scrapbook papers, and blank tags were on the list.

I then cut out and made these little pockets.  I just made them big enough to fit my tags. For those of you needing exact measurements, when folded they are 5 inches tall x 3 inches wide.

I used about five different papers for my pockets, and some of the paper was just plain white on one side.  For these papers, I glued a little square of pretty paper over the part that would be sticking up. I just liked it better this way because I have am slightly OCD.  Notice, I said slightly.  

After you have cut out twenty five of these little guys, it is time to glue them into pockets. 

Let the fun begin! Decorate your pockets in your style.  My children are all little, but we had fun decorating our advent pockets.  They did most of the gluing and placing of stickers and I just played the role of general designer, tying most of the knots and bows.

Here is a close up of some of our finished pockets.

When all our pockets were finished we arranged them on our framed foam board, five across and five down, and glued them down.  

The tags are the last, but most important part.  These will be the traditions and services that you and your family will fulfill each day.  I was so excited for this part, and again my dear friend Pinterest saved the day.  I had a list of ideas, but was in need of some inspiration, when I came across two amazing blogs.  lillightomine.com has the Light'em Up project and tsjphotography.com/blog has R.A.C.K'ed

Both of these ladies are amazing and have tons of ideas and compassion for encouraging and serving others.

These are just a few of our tags, nothing special, just hand written and a sticker or some ribbon attached. 

My children and I had so much fun with our advent calendar, it amazed me how excited they were to see what the next days activity would be.  I loved seeing their smiling faces after participating in an act of kindness, or watching their happy dance because it felt so good to give.

Sorry, my post is so far from Christmas, but maybe that will give you time to make  an advent calendar of your own.

How often do you have a date night?

I am truly curious about how often couples, with children, have a date night.  Is once a month the norm, or more frequently than that?  What is an average date for you? Are you spontaneous or a planner? 
I don't know about you, but I love date night.  I am fortunate, both my parents and husbands parents live close and watch the children.  This allows date night to happen about once every month.  This past friday was our once a month.
We are in the cattle business and date nights do not tend to be very traditional.  This night was no exception.

Dallas (that's my husband) needed help finding a cow that had gone missing.  Nana Sheila was willing to take on the task of four little crazy grandkids playing at her house why we had a DATE NIGHT.   I was really excited, only one little problem... when we arrived at the pasture it was starting to rain. 

 

This was not a big problem, but we were not going to be riding around in the comfort of the truck.  We were going to be riding these two handsome fellows.

Dallas is a very smart man, very prepared.  That is why he brought himself a rain slicker. I on the other hand was so excited that we were going on a date night, that I didn't take thought about the rain and just brought a fleece jacket and a hat.  Dallas had gloves for me.

We rode all the creeks, through brushy areas and checked the fence lines.  As the sun set I was wet, had a slight chill  and the cow was still missing, but I enjoyed every minute of it. 

A friend of mine once said "I feel closest to God when I'm out checking cattle."  I understand that feeling.

 

We loaded up and Dallas took me into town to eat at a little mexican restaurant.  It ended as a great DATE NIGHT.