{ Thinking about Advent Calendar v.09 }

It's almost that time of the year again, and approximately a year ago, I was making this (with a little help from my mom).

Believe me or not, but this photo (well the one made last year, this one has been a bit treated) is my most popular photo in my whole Flickr stream. (for the record, as of today, there are 3491 photos there, and this photo had been viewed 1428 times, and has been faved by 45 persons) Really it was a very simple advent calendar, made with not much materials in the end, and holds little papers as you may notice. No candy, no toy, just activities.

If you're a little new to this blog, you didn't know that last year we had used this advent calendar, and that I had planned 24 activities for my boys, and that we did them all. (sincerely, only one wasn't completed, and it was my own fault, I didn't have enough hours in the day ... amazing, right ?!)
If you don't remember, or never saw it, this is the list of the things that were planned in last year's advent calendar :

1 : Print & do a winter maze
2 : Make salt dough snowmen
3 : Stamps
4 : Winter Tic Tac Toe (I made ours with felt)
5 : make paper snowflakes
6 : Read Christmas books & drink cocoa + marshmallows
7 : Draw a winter landscape, and a grown-up sews/makes it with felt, like a felt board
8 : Print & color winter or Christmas themed coloring pages (ours were found online)
9 : Decorate a cardboard wreath with little bits & bobs
10 : Imagine, draw, and make a Christmas themed little book
11 : Make Dot-to-Dot pictures (ours came from a book)
12 : Draw with fabric pens on a square of cotton fabric, and a grown up sews a back, a ribbon & fills it to make an ornament
13 : Activity in the bath
14 : Make (cut windows by a grown up, then paint or draw) cardboard (gingerbread) houses
15 : Bake a cake
16 : Make Finger Puppets. They draw them, you sew them with felt
17 : Make chocolate holiday treats.(our recipe : melt dark chocolate with butter & a bit of cream, in the microwave, and make little circles with it, on parchement paper, then children add pistachios, pine nuts, almonds & pecan nuts (little nuts or dried/candied fruits). Left to dry in a cold place,or better, put them in the fridge)
18 : Make Sun-Catchers, using remnants of self-adhesive rolls (MacTac type), and little squares of colorful tissue papers
19 : Print & laminate Christmas themed bookmarks (our were from Jan Brett's website)
20 : Sort out (and archive) all their drawings/artworks/creations of the current year (coming to an end) Keep the best ones / most loved ones, and make a paper chain garland with all the "rejected" ones.
21 : Print a blank calendar (month by month) & they decorate a blank area on the calendar (ours was at the top)
22 : Play agility games (such as throwing bean bags in a basket) and after several games, they win a little toy. (ours was one Playmobil character)
23 : Decorate a gingerbread house online
24 : Bake & ice sugar cookies

Obviously I'm thinking right now about the activities that will be planned for this year's version. (because the boys are impatiently waiting for it to begin !!!) I don't want that too many of the activities repeat, the less the better. As I need the whole set of activities to be ready for December 01st, I will share here in the diary as soon as it will be complete, the list of this year's activities. I don't know why but there lay be a lot of baking, cooking & eating LOL

So, in order to get inspired, I'm up to my ears into Christmas, crafts & Christmas crafts, to my own delight ! :)

No news about my possible upcoming project. I hope that at least I will get an email, even it won't happen.

We won't be here this weekend (staying at inlaws's) so I'll try to squeeze a little post tomorrow. I hope you're all having a good, inspiring & creative end of the week. Strength, hope, and love to everyone. xoxo