Advent Calendar Part I

One of my favourite parts of Christmas growing up was the anticipation that came from the daily advent calendar. We had two every year. Each child had the traditional chocolate, open the door variety which we tended to eat the first day. The second was special. My mother found a quilt panel of a teddy bear's house with a place to search each day printed on a box at the bottom. Each day we would move the little stuffed teddy bear pinned on the quilt and then run and search our house in that spot for a little peppermint candy. We always had to be early when the it was the day to look in the mailbox. More than one year, the mailman got there first! What was even more special was the fact that she had each of us help her quilt the panel. I love looking at it each year. You can see who did each section.

I wanted to create something special for my kids. Having seen some fabulous ideas on SCS, I decided I wanted to do an activity calendar. Each circle will be the activity for one day. This way I can switch the date of each activity from year to year but keep the same calendar for the kids. The album with a numbered pocket for each day will be in another post, this is getting long already!

There are more activities that days in December, I know, but I wanted to have some big items, some simple for when we're tired and some that include helping others. This way I can swap out cards as needed. My goal is really to focus on making simple family memories, not making my holiday stressful!

The activities were computer generated in Word and printed on Very Vanilla cardstock. The circles were cut using my Creative Memories circle cutter and decorated with Creative Memories stickers from my stash - yes, I love these CM stickers! Each circle was then mounted on coloured cardstock that was cut using my large scalloped Nestie. I have to admit, I am a paper addict. All the cardstock came from scraps in my stash. No new papers were hurt in this project.

If you have special advent calendar ideas, please let me know. I love hearing about them.

Challenges this Project Meets:
Crazy 4 Challenges - Circles
Creative Inspirations - Christmas
Fab N Funky - Forget Me Not (Some of these stickers are over 4 years old!)
Mark's Finest Papers - Circles
Pile it On - Winter
Saturday Crafter - Handmade Christmas Gifts (For my children but given Dec. 1st)