The Pursuit of (TRUE) Happiness: Christmas Advent 2012

Many of you know and many of you don’t know that last year we spent (forcefully) the entire month of December in a hotel. Sounds fun right???? Try it…5 people, 3 of them 4 and under living in a hotel for a month where normal life such as work and school must go on. Oh, and Christmas…Christmas and all of its “things” must go on. Oh and a first birthday and all that entails! It was grand! I felt like an unsettled taxi cab toting 3 kids in the hotel and 3 kids out of the hotel. It was fun. Ok that’s a lie, BUT we did learn to make the best of it. We actually had to leave our house a week before we checked into the hotel so it gave me some time to think. Not much time and even though everyone told me that we would be back home before Christmas and Landon’s first birthday (it’s on the 29^th), something in my heart told me we wouldn’t. I knew we couldn’t take all of our Christmas décor to the hotel so I had to figure out something to do with the kids to make it feel like Christmas in our beige, bland hotel room! After lots of thinking and surfing the web (OK—surfing pinterest!) I came up with an interactive advent calendar. Then, it hit me, in this world of chaos that I was throwing them into, they needed something consistent. I went to Hobby Lobby and purchased “THE GREEN BOX”. It was one of those sturdy photo storage boxes that was green with Christmas ornaments on it. The kids loved when they would walk in a room a see the green box, something fun is about to happen. Sometimes it was in their room on the bed, sometimes they would practically trip over it walking in the door, sometimes it was in the car, you get the idea. The box always had everything needed for whatever project was intended for that day! It gave us something to do every day in this strange place that we didn’t have many of our own things. The craft ideas were our only decorations except for 1 strand of Christmas lights, a 2 ft tree sitting on a table, and my mom made the refrigerator look like a snowman. It was a very simple Christmas and a result of that is that Christmas in our home will be much simpler from now on. Who knew we’d end up loving this nightmare of a situation?!?!?!

Here’s a few things you need to know about my family…

I didn’t run out of ideas, my children LOVE to get new pajamas!

My kids equally love art, and all things related to painting, coloring, ect

We didn’t do a lot of baking due to said hotel experience, we only had a toaster oven. (I did however have a stove and a dishwasher! random fact!)

And most importantly, we really wanted to push the religious reason for Christmas.

So here it is the 2012 advent calendar

1. Christmas rice krispies, Christmas CD, Christmas activity pad (We were traveling most of the day)

2. Christmas Pajamas

3. “God made Christmas” DVD

4. Paint, and canvas to make thumbprint Christmas lights

5. Christmas sugar cookies, paper and stickers to make Christmas cards

6. Make red and green jell-o play dough

7. Go see Christmas lights/ new pajamas

8. painting ornaments

9. Christmas book (The three gifts)

10. reindeer food

This was a hit and several other people ended up making this too! My goal was to make it look Christmas-ish and also things that resembled dog food (I guess in my head I thought reindeer food would resemble dog food!)

pretzel balls

regular captain crunch-no berries

M&M’s (red and green)

Marshmallows

Craisins

Honey Roasted Peanuts

11. book (llama Llama Holiday Drama) and Christmas candy necklace kit

The Candy Necklace kit I found at Wal-Mart. They look like strands of Christmas lights

12. Elf movie and Christmas tree Brownie

13. Christmas Tree Canvas

I just gave them a canvas and paint and told them to paint a tree.

14. Christmas t-shirts/pictures with Santa

15. make Christmas Cookies

Sadly this was just placing the cute picture dough things on a tray and putting them in the toaster oven. Honestly, we ate more dough than cookies. I’m totally OK with this!

16. new pajamas/ Christmas books

17. Gingerbread houses

We did one of those Mini Village Kits. Landon was too young to do this so it was perfect…there were four buildings so we each decorated our own!

18. tiger and pooh Christmas movie

19. Christmas Coloring books

20. mistletoe canvas

21. Christmas Chocolates

I used those candy mold trays and colored chocolates you can buy at any craft store. We did Christmas trees and Light bulbs!

22. Christmas Books/hot chocolate

23. matching game

24. “night before Christmas” book

25. matching pajama pants (a yearly tradition since Rylee was born in 2008)

The 2013 advent calendar looks similar, but there are notable differences. I will post those ideas later but I promise they will be out in plenty of time to start!

My biggest advice if this is something that you try this year and you love it, shop the Christmas clearance sales for next year’s things. that’s what I did and I feel like we were able to do things that we wouldn’t normally be able to do (75% off makes a difference) Christmas is already expensive and you don’t want to make it even more expensive by going all out. It’s ok to use things you have (movies, books, ect) they won’t remember them from the year before anyway!

Here are just a few of our "boxes"