Around the House: The Advent

Every year I find myself having the best of intentions with my littles..."Make this Christmas special!", I say to myself. End result each year is the same old same old or worse, guilt for not having gone the extra mile in effort instead of dollars spent. This year dang it, it WILL be different. We are finally getting on the advent bandwagon!

Using a found branch (thank you neighbors for trimming your trees after bulk trash), some craft paper and an old tissue box I had on hand, I went to work.

On the front of each card, the date. On the backsides, clues for them to decode until we do our activity together. 

Here are a few of the clues and activities we're doing together:

clue: construction zone  activity: create Christmas cards for our neighbors with construction paper
clue: toothpicks (seen on back of triangle in image above)  activity: toothpick towers with marshmallows
clue: Story Keepers  activity: family movie night watching a $0.99 movie I scored at the thrift store called Story Keepers, Christmas Special
clue: star stickers  activity: family walk after dinner to look at Christmas lights

The goal was to keep things pretty simple and doable, yet memorable.

I'm hoping for lots of fun, zero guilt and memories made while filling their hearts with the love of Christ. When I was sharing all of this with my husband he asked, "what is an advent? I mean, what does it mean?" So I looked it up while we were stuck in loads of traffic and found this... Advent Conspiracy. I've got to dig into that site a bit deeper. It's awesome.

How about you? Do you advent? What are some special things you do with your family this time of year? (If you'd like my whole Advent list, email me. xo

PS - If you haven't gone to vote for Sango (labeled as Social Worker on site) yet, here's the link: http://www.drpeppertuition.com/ You can vote daily. Thanks!