Last year I was such a dud with Christmas activities (since I had a newborn) so I really wanted to make it up to the boys this year with lots of fun things to do to celebrate Christmas. I was telling Amy about this and she said "you have to blog about this" so I am!
A few years ago I got the idea to do a box advent calendar off the web (I think originally from Martha Stewart) and thought it was really cute so I went to Xpedex, found a couple sizes of different boxes and came home to create. I just put some cute Christmasy paper on a few and a few die cut numbers and snowflakes and called it good. Everything takes longer these days because of little Miss Luce but this probably would only take an hour to make. After I got all the boxes arranged how I wanted, I attached them to the door with double sided foam tape.
Then I went to work filling the boxes. I first made a list of all the activities I wanted to do, projects I wanted to create and then made a calendar and filled in the days. I then printed out the "master calendar" for me to put in my purse so I know what's coming up and if I need to get supplies then printed a list to cut up for each day with that day's activity. Then I filled the boxes. I put a Christmas CD in one of the boxes and some candy in a few others. Tomorrow's contains a coupon for free ice skate rentals!
So every day, one of the boys opens a box and reads what is in store for them that day. They have been excited and look forward to opening the box every morning.
I have had to do a little sneaking and rearrange a couple of times because of schedule changes, etc. but all-in-all it has been fun. Some of the ideas in the boxes include: Make your own ornament, Get a Christmas tree, Make a paper chain, watch a Christmas movie while drinking hot chocolate, make Christmas cookies, go to a Christmas concert, make a snowman, See the lights at Temple Square. A lot of the things are simple but now they are actually on my calendar and I have it planned out so I don't have to stress about fitting everything in. When I showed the calendar to Sam he said it was pretty ambitious but so far we have done everything (except visit Santa, they didn't want to!)and I haven't felt (really) overwhelmed yet. And, I love giving the kids something to anticipate and get excited about. We are creating fun memories!
