Christmas Advent Calendar

I made this Advent Calendar last year and the kids LOVED this. So when I pulled this out on December 1st, my big kids literally shouted for joy! :)

 

We have lots of fun things planned!

Go to Mission Inn; Maybe do some Ice skating, visit Santa, look at decor
Make Jesus' Birthday cake (brown, red, white, green)
Check out the Christmas lights in town (Phelan has two really fun places to check out- both with over 20,000 lights!)

Paint finger/toenails in Christmas colors

Make gingerbread houses
Watch a (few!) Christmas movies
Go caroling
Make a Christmas craft
Read the Nativity story
Lauren and Jake's Christmas choral recital

Bake cookies and deliver to friends/family

Decorate sugar cookies
Have French toast and hot chocolate for dinner under candlelight (a hit last year!)
Create ornaments for family, friends and teachers
Buy and decorate our Christmas tree
Go to Alta Loma to see more Christmas lights
Serve others by choosing gifts for Angel tree kids and Operation Christmas Child
Dance party to Christmas music
Lauren and Yeo's piano recital
Make paper snowflakes
Dress up fancy for Christmas eve service
Choose and wrap gifts for each other
Perform a random act of Christmas kindness :)
Make play-doh snowmen
Kiss under the mistletoe
Make Hot Cocoa

What are you planning on doing this year?

Advent Christmas fun; wrapping gifts

So, I forgot my camera when this took place but the kids opened their advent calender and learned that Justin and I would be taking them to Walmart to buy their siblings a small Christmas gift. They each had $5 to spend on each sibling, and both Jake and Lauren were methodical in picking out gifts for each other. It was cute to watch them go up and down the isles, looking for a gift that they though their sibling would love.

 

Lauren chose a Littlest Pet Shop kitten for Megan, and a Spiderman action hero for Jake.

Jake chose a Fur Real animal for Lauren and a set of baby cars (?!?) for Megan.

And Megan was told by her mommy to pick out hats and mittens for her 'bubba and sissy' :)

 

Anyway, we came home and then they wrapped. They chose and cut the wrapping paper, and then wrapped them completely on their own... not that you could tell by the pics or anything, haha!

 

I love watching the kids really get the meaning of Christmas and wanting to bless others, esp. their siblings (for the time being, haha). It's gonna be a great Christmas!

Christmas Advent fun; Sugar cookies

In our Advent Calendar a few days ago, the kids discovered that they were going to make Sugar cookies. You would have thought they saved the world by all of the screaming and yay'ing! ;)

 

So, we made the dough,

 

kneaded it,

rolled it,

and cutout Christmas trees, stockings, reindeer, gingerbread men, and stars:

 

After they were baked and cooled, we made colored frosting,

then frosted them,

and decorated them until you couldn't see the frosting anymore, haha!

And then, the best part... we ate 'em!

 

Yay for Advent fun ;)

Christmas Advent fun; snowflake paintings

Using some thick water color paper, painters tape and a variety of blue paints, we made snowflake designs:

Then we painted ALL over the paper.

And this is where someone got super, duper blue:

Think Papa Smurf... but cuter ;)

 

We pulled off the tape after the paint dried, and voila:

 

Snowflakes :)

Yay for Advent Christmas fun!

Christmas ADvent; Finger and toenail painting

We woke up Monday morning, opened our Advent Calender box and learned that we would be painting our nails that day. This may seem like no big deal, but for some reason, my kids loooove to paint their nails :) So Lauren chose red with white dots (finger and toenails) and green and red for Jake's toenails (no, we really don't care if he wears nail polish on his toes... he won't do it forever (I hope:)). And Megan got red toenails, although I wasn't about to try to take a picture with red polish, a camera and a grabby toddler in my arms!

 

It was a low-key Advent activity day... gotta have those occasionally when we're not out on the town, lol ;)

Christmas Advent fun; Mission Inn!

 

We go to the Mission Inn every year (no pics last year but some from previous years) to check out the festivities; we bundle up, walk the streets, listen to Christmas music, eat some yummy food, and get excited about Christmas ;) This year we invited our friends the MacDonalds because our kids are in love with each other (esp. Lauren and Aidan) and Adam and Jamie aren't so bad either ;)

 

We had a great time. I could have taken a million pictures but I refrained. But here's a few from the fun night though... 

 

We bought a few cupcakes from Casey's cupcakes... winner of Cupcake Wars on TV. They were delish!

SNOW!!!

Reindeer's... guess which two of my children were in love?!? ;)

Mini donuts... Justin and Adam ate their weights worth ;)



Little lady got the best seat in the house!

So much fun. Can you tell we're loving our Advent Calender full of fun activities? ;)

Christmas Advent Craft; Milkjug snowmen!

I'll be honest; there are a lousy three pictures of this craft. With Megan up and running around the house, and a super hot glue gun within reach, I decided to forgo the picture process and focus on the craft and safety ;)

 

 

Anyway, we got a clean milk jug and hot glued construction paper eyes, nose and mouth (kids cut out everything and I glued where they told me to place the features). Then we added a strip of paper and some pompoms for ear muffs.

 

Finally, my man cut a whole in the back of the jugs and threaded in some Christmas lights.

 

And when they were finished, we lit them up and they looked like this:

 

 

I LOVE them. I love that they're always lit up in the house, and they truly make me smile.

 

Another fun, cute Advent Christmas activity ;)

Christmas Advent fun; Decorating the house!

This is the only picture I took of the house decor but it makes me smile every time I see it :) I love the colors and the sense of family and warmth.

So, this marked Day 1 of the Advent Christmas fun.... we decotaed the enire house ;) I have taken many more pictures since then, so beware... lots of Advent fun in pictures to come!

Christmas Advent Calendar

Every season we do a fun list of some sort; a summer fun list, a winter bucket list, a list of fun fall things, etc.. You can see I'm big on lists... and keeping my kiddos learning and stimulated :)

 

So instead of just writing out a fun Christmas list this year, I decided to make an Advent calendar. In fact, I hosted my first 'Pinterest party' with a bunch of girlfriends where I painted this bad boy. It started off as boring, old wood:

 

 

 

and after some paint, festive scrapbook paper, loads of Mod Podge and ribbon, it's turned into this:

 

I'm really pleased with the final product. But I'm even more pleased with the fun Christmas things Justin and I came up with this year...

So every night, I'll fill the next day's slot with an activity we'll be doing (based on the time we have available) and a small treat of some sort. The kids are uber excited and have been asking everyday if it's December 1st yet ;:)

I obviously didn't put all of the activities on this list because some will be spur of the moment (crafts, baking, etc), but here's our advent activities list this year:

Go to Mission Inn; Ice skating, visit Santa, look at decor

Make Jesus' Birthday cake (brown, red, white, green)

Check out the Christmas lights in

Paint finger/toenails in Christmas colors

Make gingerbread houses
Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn
Go caroling as a small group
Make a Christmas craft

Read the Nativity story

Bake cookies and deliver to neighbors

Decorate sugar cookies
Have French toast and hot chocolate for dinner under candlelight
Create cards for family, friends and teachers
Decorate Christmas tree
Serve others by choosing gifts for Angel tree kids
Make dough ornaments
Dance party to Christmas music
Make paper snowflakes
Dress up fancy  for Christmas eve service
Wrap gifts for each other
Date night; Special dinner out and pick out a Christmas tree
Perform a random act of Christmas kindness
Make play-doh snowmen
Kiss under the mistletoe
Unwrap a new Christmas book
Make hot chocolate

I'm pretty excited! Scratch that... we're all pretty excited!

What do you have planned this Christmas season?