Christmas Advent Calendar

I love the idea of Advent calendars, but I always get nervous about the execution! Last year was the first time that I planned out activities ahead of time for each day in December. It worked pretty well, but I forgot a lot! I also didn't have any spiritual emphasis; just fun things for Bella and I to do during the day.

 

This year, I made my expectations a little more realistic and tried to include activities that we would already be doing as a family, like getting our picture taken with Santa at Chick-fil-A or buying our Christmas tree. I also really wanted to include a daily Bible reading, since Bella is at the age where she understands more about what Christmas is really about.

 

[We're working on it anyway; right now, she's still pretty pumped about presents and not quite as excited about Jesus' birthday.]

 

We read each night from the Jesus Storybook Bible, and I found an advent calendar on Pinterest that uses stories from this Bible to count down to Christmas. Since the girls are already familiar with this one, I figured we should stick with it - the graphics are beautiful and there's a paragraph at the end of each story that ties it to Jesus; you start with Creation and end at the cross.

 

There are so many ideas online about how to display your advent calendar! Since I'm decorating with red and gold this year and trying to include "woodsy" stuff, I thought I'd stay simple and use brown paper bags with red numbers on the front.

 

I love the way they turned out and I think they're sturdy enough to use them again next year if I want to! I have activities planned for each day - some of them for during the day with me and some of them are family activities to do at night once Steve gets home. I included things for Grandma and Grandpa to do with the girls, too, since we'll be gone in New York next week and they'll be staying with the girls, and for Papa and Mimi once they come up for Christmas!

So excited to start! We were still on the road for December 1st, so the activity was to sing carols in the car. Tonight we go get our tree!